Beginners guide to Campervan Solar Panels | Which one is right for you?

[Music] hello everybody and welcome back to valley campus today we're going to be shining a light on the subject of solar panels [Music] when it comes to charging the leisure battery in your camper van or motorhome there is more than one method of doing so today we've got james here from rain automotive and he is going to be speaking all about solar panels yep today we're going to take you through the how when what why and things to consider if you're looking at solar panel for your motorhome or if you should be looking at a solar panel for your motorhome or campervan in front of us we have two solar panels the way they work are the same but they are built differently but before we go into that how does a solar panel work right so very simply the solar panel is made up of a series of cells that are all joined together and ultimately end up in these two little mc4 plugs here the sunlight whether it's cloudy or not daylight will hit the cells generate dc direct current electricity which is the same as what's in your battery which will then go into one of these controllers be regulated so it's good and safe for charging a battery and then the power either goes into your battery or direct to your appliances for you to use well that's about as simple as it could get thank you very much that's excellent obviously the voltage be it on a sunny day or a cloudy day can vary yes um can i just take the solar panel and then plug it directly into my battery and if not why no okay you know the simple answer would be no there probably would be a time when you could but right way too complicated for me okay the answer is no that you want one of these regulators because these will generate somewhere between these two panels in particular will give you somewhere between 15 and 21 23 volts which if you put that straight onto your battery would not do any flavors at all it would shorten the life it might overcharge it just don't do it put through we have three different types of controller here and we've got a very simple very affordable pwm controller we've got a more efficient more intelligent mppt controller and then this is the battery to battery charger with the built-in mppt controller excellent and that's just different methods of regulating the charge for more efficiency as you go through excellent and when it comes to the two solar panels we've got here today what are they and why are they so different okay yes so they're both made up of monocrystalline cells which you can see characterized by the the um diagonal edges of the cells which are less visible on the black panels the back sheet is black yeah and that's the type of cell we tend to use more often because it's more efficient and on campervans space is a premium you don't want to have to have your pen panel a percentage bigger because your cells are less efficient okay so they're both made up of the cells they're both made up of a similar number of cells the voltage is slightly different between the panels but they're both considered a 12 volt nominal panel the main difference is this panel is flexible and really thin very thin yeah about four millimeters thin very very light it bends so it takes the contour of your roof and when you stuck it on you can barely see it yeah this panel here is an aluminium framed ridgid thing which i'll let you do and there's the difference between the two is this one's more aesthetically pleasing that's probably more durable and more efficient because it cools better with that air gap under it gotcha okay effectively they do the same job yeah they both charge your battery they both sit on the roof of your van permanently but there's a reason you would pick each one super no thank you very much we now know what these are and how they work why would i put one on my camper van and when yep good question so whether you're designing your system now and you've you know you've got nothing in the van you're starting from scratch or whether you've already got a van solar panel is basically going to put charge into your battery throughout the day so it's going to help prolong your battery life it's particularly useful if you are talking about extending from maybe three days of battery life to four it's not particularly good if you're trying to get higher powered items into the system because it's quite a low generation of electricity but ultimately you are looking for one when the battery bank you've got or the space for the batteries you've got currently is not going to provide the amount of power you need to run the items you want to run perfect and this will give you more power top it up through sunlight and it's not going to solve all of your problems but it's definitely going to help and in terms of running an appliance for example say i wanted my um fridge to stay cool for longer than say two two and a half days on a fully charged 100 amp hour battery for example is that the sort of time i consider a solar panel yeah yeah i think that that is a very good example of when you would consider it because it might it may not be enough to sustain the fridge entirely in the own in its own right but when paired with the battery you could take that time of two to three days and you might be able to when the dependents stretch it to three four days but five you know a good sunny day that's not too hot so the fridge isn't working too hard it may even sustain it completely depending on the size of your panel and how big it is what are you parked in the sun yeah that kind of thing what's the efficiency of this rest of the system like and speaking of efficiency when it comes to sizes and cost and supplies things like that is it is it worth spending extortionist amounts of extortionate amounts of money on an all singing or dancing solar panel or are you quite happy to go for a cheaper version what's the sort of difference there so that would again depend a little bit on your situation in a campervan motorhome space is absolutely of a premium you may have vents in the roof you may have just a small roof so space is a premium so we do tend to like i said go to higher efficiency but there is always a line where that becomes not cost effective that last five ten percent of efficiency that you're trying to eke out of it is gonna cost double triple the amount and that's where you would possibly draw the line okay and you know the difference between the two panels actually when you talk about efficiency that's one of the big this is flexible it looks really cool it's low profile stealth whatever you want to call it this one is going to be more efficient it cools better and solar panels have an optimal temperature to run out yeah and the cooling is essential because they're deliberately placed straight in the full sun and the cells are black so they get hot yeah and so efficiency will be one of the things that's going to come into when you're picking which panel so basically what we're saying is it depends entirely on your situation your user requirements the appliances you're running yeah and your situation when you're traveling i guess yeah i know these help people achieve the off-grid which everybody sort of strives for but in in reality every camper van is off grid to a point of course if you want to maintain your stay without plugging into power or even traveling to use the vehicle alternator to charge the leisure battery this is an alternative yep yeah exactly and like you said about it being individual things we have what we could what we call the four factors of choosing your solar panel it's just a little way to get you thinking about the things that the solar panel is affected by yeah and so the first one would be the location where are you in the world and the further north you go the less solar activity you'll get in winter and generally the lower the angle of the sun and because you can't adjust the angle of the panel that makes quite a difference to the yield that you're going to get the amount of power you're going to get out of it number two is the season which also touches on location in the winter you'll get maybe a fifth as much power on a sunny day as you would in the summer days are shorter sun angles lower not as good not as effective so if you wanted to be off-grid completely in the winter you would need a massive amount of soda compared to in the summer so number three is and we've already kind of referenced this is roof space yeah it's no good thinking oh i need a 400 watt panel which isn't really this but yeah you haven't got the space or it's no use putting a panel this big on the roof of an rv because it's probably not going to match up to what you need the fourth point number four is the aesthetics of the panel we've already spoken about the fact that this one is super thin and flexible and very low impact visually versus these which are a little bit bigger and more visible from the ground and the mounting systems can be quite clunky they can be yeah yeah so if you have got a smaller van with more curve to the roof these can look a bit more out of place than they do on say a larger like the sprinter yeah ducato you can't see them up there so aesthetics is as important the fact that you can't see it and that might sway you one way or the other cool and when it so we've got our we've chosen our panel um in terms of those four factors we now want to control them inside the vehicle before they go into the battery because these can provide up to how many volts out of a set of leads so if this hasn't got a controller and i want to put a multimeter in those leads right now what can the voltage be up to full sunlight these panels make the most you'll see is probably 23 volts which will quite quickly um impact the health of our batteries right yes yes do not do that so to stop that happening there is a number of alternatives when it comes to controlling that voltage before it then feeds into your battery and we've got three examples here we um well i'll let you go ahead and explain it so this is the very very simplistic pwm controller which just basically chops that voltage down right just resists it and lets the power go into the battery very simple very unsophisticated very cost effective maybe if you're just having a panel on the roof just to trickle it when you're not using the van and you're not really bothered about maximum efficiency that might be the time to go for that but and a budget constraint yeah yeah i mean you know i think if you're looking at eeking out of the panel the extra size you would put on the panel to compensate for the reduced efficiency would probably cost more than the price step to the next stop to a more efficient controller um because you you can be 20 30 difference between the pwm and the embryo in terms of efficiency yeah so your panel would then be 30 bigger yep to get the same amount of power into your back gotcha that's so effectively it's not a cost effective approach it does its job it got its place not frequently used we tend to use one of these too so this is the you know we've said the battery to battery charger they're both mppt controllers so they both have a way of monitoring the voltage and adjusting the charge based on exactly what the panel is doing which is very good at eking out more power in lower light conditions and that's where they really get their money's worth but all we really need to know is that they are very efficient so on a day like today mid july it's beautiful rain yeah it's it's but there's still some sunlight there virtually not an mppt mppt controller would be the best at getting as much i think if we were to get two of these sit them side by side two batteries while i'm up to the controllers you're going to see more coming out of the mppt on most situations perfect excellent probably would go for that okay so i now know which solar panel i want due to the four factors i know i'm going to use this controller um but i don't know what size i need in terms of its capacity um and what's and things like that as well what how do i know or how do i figure out what size panel i need and we're not talking size in terms of directions we're talking about the size of washes yeah so how do i figure that out so there are a few different approaches to working out the wattage if you are looking for something very specific in terms of perhaps very extended periods of time off-grid sustained entirely by solar you will need to calculate your power consumption for inside the vehicle and then compare that to the estimated yields of your panel for where you're going what time of year you're going and this can be calculated there's a little tool on our website that you can download that gives you a sort of leave me to it i was going to lead into that link but i'm sorry i'm sorry um but yeah so you can calculate that and then use them figures to basically say that i would need a 215 300 watts of solar to on average because solar is so unpredictable that you can't thoroughly calculate it but on average this amount of power would give you a balance with what you're using that's kind of the top end of what you might use the other more simplistic one is where people just want to extend by a day yeah by two days they want to trickle their battery when it's parked at home because it doesn't get used very much that you can do the same calculations for that but with that tends to be more what fits in the gap i've got on the roof what does my budget let me put on there and generally speaking that is more the smaller panels where it's just helping rather than attempting to sustain so choosing the right panel isn't just a case of okay that's the size in terms of dimensions there's lots of different things to consider it's not the sort of answer you'd ask on a random facebook group and then 30 people would chime in and go that's the one you want there is actually calculations to make there's lots of factors to consider and where would i go and work out those calculations well with those calculations you can head to our website if you download either our power audit form or our customer layout form both of which have the same battery and solar calculator which gives you the power consumption of a lot of popular items and space to put in other items that you might have that aren't on the list how long you're going to use them for how many of them you're going to have gives you a combined figure of what power you're likely to need and then below that you can play for play with the wattage of the solar you know does 150 watt panel does that get me there yeah no okay what about 215 and am i in winter am i in summer um you can tinker with those until it all matches up and then you'll know roughly where you are and but i would measure your roof space first go into all that trouble to find that you need 500 watts of solar and your roofs you've got a bed with rascal yeah yeah it's not no perfect once again that is exactly the information we needed today once again i've learned a hell of a lot i have a very basic knowledge of solar panels and charging systems as well but thanks to james from rain automotive for providing with us with that knowledge um if people want to find you or the products you sell or the advice you can give whether they go to do that so the best place would be to visit our website which is www.rainautomotive.com.uk perfect and there we have it another one of these kind of back to basic videos when it comes to teaching you about elements of your leisure electric systems in your camper van there's a few more of these videos go ahead and check out the playlist but for now thank you very much james and thank you for checking us out bye-bye [Music] foreign

Channel: Combe Valley Campers

Views: 69,768

Keywords: solar, rv solar, van life, beginners guide, solar panels, campervan solar, what is a solar panel, how does a solar panel work, what solar panels do i need, what do solar panels do, do i need a solar charge controller, do i need a solar panel regulator, solar panel rv setup, colar panel camper, campervan solar system, campervan solar panels, why do i need a solar charge controller, how do i choose a solar panel, what are the different types of solar panels, flexible solar panel

Id: a2DBNmA1pH0

Length: 17min 5sec (1025 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 19 2021