As I'm sure you know, there's "no free lunch" ; it's always a give and take. The last Wetwesty meet I attended was at Fish Lake WA. Unlike the image shown here: http://www.coveresortatfishlake.com/campground/ there were many trees. Add some cloud cover and things go down hill. One of my original plans was to buy a folding solar panel but in the above conditions, that would mean I stay in camp chasing sun. I do miss the LP mode of the Dometic 182 but as others have noted, it just wasn't cutting it in high ambient temps. At this point, I carry a small cooler as backup. It also provides storage for water etc. One far fetched thought I had was using a reflector of some kind to catch the sun and direct it to the panel. But the gymnastics involved, even if it was a cromulent idea in terms of sun capture, would be a minor PITA if not amusing to others in camp. Neil.
On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 8:51 AM, mark drillock <mdrillock@cox.net> wrote: > So the answer to the inadequacies of solar is to buy ever more of it and > cover the roof, then carry some extra panels to spread around the camp > on long leashes? Then put a couple hundred pounds of battery in the > interior storage spaces, and do the solar panel shuffle every day to try > to make the best of things? Kinda makes one long for a 3 way fridge again. > > Mark > > Barry Cotter wrote:
>> Having a 150w or 200w panel fixed to your roof and then a second mobile >> 50w to chase the sun when necessary seems like a good solution. .... >> If time permits, my winter project is to fix a 190w panel to the roof and >> then a quick connect port elsewhere for the mobile panel, possibly at the >> city water hookup entry as I don't use it any more. I've got 2x6v AGMs >> under the back seat and panels much smaller are going to struggle in the >> PNW... Maybe in the open of the Baja but not here. If I bring my batteries >> down to near 50% it can take my shore charger a couple days to get them back >> up to full charge.
>>> On Oct 8, 2013, at 10:20, "Neil N" <musomuso@GMAIL.COM> wrote: >>> In hindsight, especially for PNW conditions, (cloudy) if I had two >>> panels I'd be tempted to hard mount one then use one as a roaming >>> panel to chase the sun. That would all depend on size of panels, draw >>> etc.
-- Neil n Blog: tubaneil.blogspot.ca '88 Westy http://tinyurl.com/c8rlw6p '81 VanaJetta 2.0 "Jaco" http://tubaneil.googlepages.com/ Vanagon VAG Gas inline-VR Engine Swap Group: |
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