Admittedly I should think a single 100watt solar panel is enough for all my touring needs under normal circumstances. I run a 50L national luna twin weekender (so it has a fridge and freezer in one) which is fairly frugal. The 100watt solar is connected through the MPPT of my CTEK and that is hooked up to a 90Ah gel battery.
The thing is though. I have been testing this setup, stationary, in the backyard to see what it does under different circumstances. Under cloudy but hot conditions the battery does run down eventually but it goes down very slowly. When driving the smartpass pushes a lot of power into the battery all at once, if it is drained enough to accept a high charge but like trout I have been eyeballing an AC to bring some relief during extreme conditions (45c in india for example...)
I had to start somewhere in my research and the first thing that came up of course is generating power, let alone storing it.
Thus far it seems that:
- decent brand panels seem to fare a lot better in terms of aging, though 5 years is about what you can expect from them.
- prevent bending, they are meant to be bent into a shape once and not for permanent bending
- keep em cool (enough) to do their job (and prevent premature wear)
all those are acceptable for me, except the bending part. I would like to be able to move one or two into the sun if needed so that requires some more thought.
-P
