Hi everybody – we are up here at the storage site again in it’s a beautiful summer’s day, and I thought it’d, be a good opportunity to come out here and talk to you about solar panels. Specifically this one here we’ve got in the caravan.
Now we’ve, had lots of questions over the past few months about our solar panels and eagle-eyed viewers have noticed it in the front window, and we thought we’ve come up here today and discuss a particular setup that we have Here and also I’ll – just cover off some basics about solar panels to help you understand them more.
So I & # 39. Ve got another smaller panel inside the caravan. So let’s head on inside. I’ll. Show you how it all works and things to look out for so this is a smaller lightweight panel, which I’ve used for other things in the past.
It’s a polycrystalline panel, and you can tell it’s. A polycrystalline panel because it’s, got a blue look to it and if we were to shine it in the light and look at it quite closely, it would look like crushed up rock the one in the caravan is a mono crystalline panel, and You can tell that because it’s slightly darker and the corners are usually nipped off the edges of the actual cells in the top corner.
I’ll, put a link to a video which talks about the different manufacturing processes of the panel’s, and you can get a good lot of information from that video with every panel. You need a controller. This here is a very typical controller.
Don’t pay too much attention to this. At the moment, I’ll, come back to this in a bit with that as well. You need a battery, and what I have here is I’ve got a sealed lead-acid battery, which mimics what we have here in the caravan it’s a principally it’s, a 12-volt battery.
It’s. A lot less current, obviously than what we have one a larger battery, but this is generally all you would need to get a good solar system set up in your Caravan. So this is our controller for our solar panel.
I’ll talk about why we need a controller in a moment, but let’s just go through the connections that we have here. We’ve, got a positive and negative for our solar panel positive, a negative for a battery, and there’s, a positive and negative for a load.
I’m, going to talk about the load in a moment, but very simply. What we do is we’d connect. Our solar panel connect our battery and that’s. It. The solar panel will provide a charge to the battery and keep the battery charged up now.
This terminal here, which allows us to run devices from this controller. It’s, not usually used inside the caravan. The reason for that is that we just use too much power. We pull too much current, and this won’t, be able to supply nearly enough power for us to run the caravan it’s quite a clever terminal.
The controller will not only charge the battery up but allow you to run your device as well, and if there is no solar energy, let’s, say, for instance, it’s, just nighttime. It will take all the power from the battery and run or if there’s enough daylight, it will take the power from the solar panel and also charge the battery up and allow you to run the device as well.
So it’s quite clever, and this is very typical of the sort of controller that you will get if you buy a solar panel. Now, with this controller, you can see that I don’t, have any readouts or any displays here, and that’s.
Why I’ve got this here. This is a watt meter and it shows me the power and the voltage of the battery, and it shows me how much charge is going into the battery and how much charge is being generated from the solar panel.
It’s, quite a useful little device in actual fact, and I’ll – put a link to that in the description below so let’s connect this up and I & # 39. Ll show how it all works. Ok, so here we go, we & # 39.
Ve got the three devices all laid out here and I’m, going to show you very simply how it all connects together. So it is really straightforward. In actual fact, what I have here is I’ve got my little meter and I & # 39.
Ve also got a fuse here as well. I’ve got a 5 amp fuse just as protection, and that’s. Exactly what we have here on the caravan so first thing we’re going to do. Is we’re just going to connect the battery to our controller? So there we go that’s, the battery now connected and as you can see, that’s, given us a voltage of thirteen point, one five volts, so all we need to do now is connect the solar panel to this plug.
Here now what I’m, going to do Matt you can take the solar panel out and Tom’s, going to run outside and just put it in the daylight and we’re sure to see when it gets connected. Some increase in the voltage Thomas has gone outside with the panel and, as you can see, who are reading thirteen point, twelve volts here on the battery.
So as soon as Tom connects it, we should see a change in the voltage and there we go. That is immediate. Look. You can see that the battery is shooting straight up there to thirteen point, seven three and that’s, how it all gets connected together.
It’s, pretty straightforward, isn’t it, but then we just go through a couple of points with you. First of all, the controller. Why would you need a controller with your solar panel? Well, it’s really straightforward.
Actually, the solar panel can create a voltage from nothing up to about twenty volts in some cases, and your battery requires a constant voltage. It requires a stable, regulated supply in order for it to charge up safely and properly now.
Obviously, if our solar panel is creating anything between zero and twenty volts, it’s, just not going to be able to supply the correct voltage to the battery to enable it to get charged up. So the controller will regulate and control the current and the voltage to the battery, and when the battery is fully charged, it will stop charging.
So it’s, a very clever little box of tricks and it’s, something that every solar panel needs. Now when you purchase your solar panel, 99 % of the time it will come with a controller now. The next point I want to raise is that everything that we’re doing here, keeping the battery charged up, keeping it up-to-date and topped up and the solar panel etc.
All of it refers to the 12-volt system. It doesn’t handle anything to do with the mains voltage if you want to run mains rated devices like a TV or a hairdryer, or anything like that. You’re, going to need to have another box like this, and this is an inverter which is caught up on my shirt.
This is an inverter and I’m, doing a video covering off inverters. What to look out for how to buy them and how to connect them up to your Caravan as well, so that’s. Another video I’m, going to be doing so without further ado.
Let’s. Spin, the camera around and show you our setup inside the caravan, so you can see here that, just like, I showed you on the kitchen side, there we’ve got two panels. We & # 39, ve got a controller, and this battery lead here goes under the bunk and down into the battery compartment, where it’s bolted straight on to the battery terminals.
There is a fuse down in the battery compartment as well just to make sure that if anything goes wrong, the fuse will blow, but that’s. Basically it it’s as simple as that. Now, what going to do is I’m just going to put on the screen now a quick diagram that I’ve created to show you exactly how it’s all wired together and there we go guys.
That is our own, complete solar installation that we have here and the caravan. So the panel itself is 250 watt panels in a suitcase configuration I’ve, put a link in the description below to show you exactly where you can get these from.
I purchased this off of ebay two years ago now and it’s still going strong. It does provide a lot of charge for everything here. It keeps the battery topped up. It keeps our alarm activated and it keeps our tracker enabled as well.
The great thing that we have with our tracker is this subscription has a web portal, and web portal shows us the voltage of our battery as well. In it, it calls in twice a day and shows what the battery condition is.
So we know that the battery is in good working order, so that’s. What we have here, why didn’t? We put it on the roof. It’s really straightforward. Two reasons we physically don’t have enough real estate on the roof to put a hundred watt panel, and secondly, as well, is that to put them on the roof.
You need to put a hole in your roof and I just don’t fancy that, and on top of that, you need to keep them scrupulously clean in order for them to work and the as you’ve seen around here. Many of the caravans are not particularly pretty on the roof and there’s, a lot of green that comes across from the trees.
So you know what keeping it clean would be a bit of a tall order, but we found with the panel facing forward in the window behind into the windows partially obscured it’s, really not a problem. It works very, very well.
We’ve found that the panel itself is actually working is probably as good as a 50 watt panel, because it’s behind tinted glass and it’s partially obscured. But it’s, perfect for our needs and when we go away the panel goes outside lies next to the hitch and it picks up all the Sun all day long.
We’ve survived 10 days with that panel, with no problems at all just using our panel and one bottle of gas, and it was absolutely fine. So I hope that answered a lot of questions for you. If you do have further questions feel free to put them down below and we’ll, try best to answer them for you and that’s it from us from today.
So until the next one guys we’ll speak to you again soon take care now bye, bye,
