Amount of solar needed?

[Giant]

The best procedure I've found for asking a question on here is as follows:

1. Write down the question.
2. Think through as many ways as possible that the question itself could be misinterpreted.
3. Go back and rewrite the question to avoid as many as possible of these.
4. Think through all the answers you've already ruled out.
5. Go back and mention all these with reasons.
6. Take a deep breath.
7. Post the question.
8. Stay glued to the forum for the next couple of hours fending off the people who, despite steps 2-4, have ignored most what you've written.
9. Spend the next day or so answering different variants of "but why would you want to do that?".
10. After the initial flurry of responses, two total tangents and a personal flamewar between two members, attempt to steer the thread back onto the original topic.
11. Give up and announce that you've come up with the answer yourself anyway.
12. Spend another week defending your decision to new posters who haven't read the rest of the thread.

[MtB]

An excellent analysis, Mr Giant!

[WotEver]

52 minutes ago, Giant said:

Stay glued to the forum for the next couple of hours fending off the people who, despite steps 2-4, have ignored most what you've written.

De rigueur for most forums

[pig]

Here's me being helpful

My boat is used for trips between April and September, for 4 to 12 weeks at a time. Before solar, I drove down to the moorings every week or so to run the engine.

I decided to move the boat to a different area on the system, about 100 miles drive from home. Even though the new mooring had hookup, decided to install solar.

Bought 2 x 250w panels and a 40A Tracer MPPT Controller from Bimble.

Easy to install. Flat mounted on roof, no tilting brackets.

Before this setup, I was changing one of the batteries in a 4 x 110Ah bank every 9 months on average.

Since installing the panels, 18 months ago, I've not needed to replace a battery. The batteries seem to have a new lease of life,  presumably because they are getting a decent charge. The main draw is a 240v fridge running from a 1800w inverter - pre solar the Smartgauge would drop very close to 50% overnight; now it's reading 75 to 85% in the morning.

There's no battery drain when I'm away from the boat (everything switched off), and in the depths of winter it's great to arrive at the boat, press the Smartgauge button, and be greeted with the 100% reading.

My advice would be to get as much power as you can afford/fit on the boat. It's the best  thing since sliced bread IMHO.

Cheers

 

[WotEver]

6 minutes ago, pig said:

My advice would be to get as much power as you can afford/fit on the boat. It's the best  thing since sliced bread IMHO.

In a nutshell