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Can anyone give me a quick run down on solar panel set-up for gulf cruising? What size panels? What to buy, or more importantly what not to buy? We will be wanting to run a 12v fridge and basic electrics off 2x 12v batteries for no more than a week at a time.

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For what it's worth, I have recently purchased an 80 watt solar panel and morning star pwm controller. Nothing flash but solid enough.

It has been running my compressor fridge 24/7 for the last week and the 220 amp hour battery bank is fully charged still.

I have been so impressed I have ordered another panel for the holidays as normally I would be running the engine at least once a day to keep everything charged.

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Hi Willow --how has this been running your compressor fridge --I have a solar panel to effectively keep on topping up the batteries but the fridge/freezer is compressor driven so am intrigued with how you are doing this .

Any comments welcome,

Andrew

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I'm about to replace mine - 2 old 35 watt units - with a new 120w semi flexible unit. That should run the fridge/freezer and my basic electrical requirements, and pretty much all of it in conjunction with the wind gen.

 

Interestingly, the 120w unit is about the same dimensions of the 13 year old 35 watt units (combined, not singly)

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Nate, you cannot size solar panels with the info you gave.

We need some further - like how much does the fridge draw, and how often does it's compressor run to maintain the temp? How much draw for the other accessories, and how long are they on for? Once you have a total number of amp/hrs required, you can spec the panels to match your requirements...

 

Duty Free - You CANNOT run an engine driven compressor based system electrically. Sorry. Those compressors are a couple of HP - you batts would be flat really quickly. What I have in Island Time is both an engine driven system AND and electric system, both cooling the same cabinets, but both completely separate. The electric one is 12 or 240v.

 

Matt

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Ours are running a self contained Fridge Freezer, similar to a Waeco, solar panels etc. are just a local chandlers.

I looked up plenty of sites online with cheap panels but there wasn't much in it price wise so decided to support thr local guy.

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3A fridge running 60% of the time = approx 550Wh so would require about 90W solar panel to cover it.
Would buy a 120W in this case. 

I normally assume 6 hours light at about 70% of the panels capability. 

In my opinion (as this whole reply is!) if you are running a fridge, you don't want to have to choose at some stage between warm beer or low voltage :D

Also: The independent Waeco fridges etc are actually real efficient. I have an inbuilt isotherm which could probably do with more insulation. I can't keep my volts up on a hot day with my 80W panel.

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I found an 80 watt would keep up in ideal conditions so just bought two of them, often one of them isn't in an ideal location so works well.

Occasionally in the winter I am having to top the batteries off if I am using a lot of power and not running the engine much.

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Can anyone give me a quick run down on solar panel set-up for gulf cruising? What size panels? What to buy, or more importantly what not to buy? We will be wanting to run a 12v fridge and basic electrics off 2x 12v batteries for no more than a week at a time.

 

Not sure if you've finished this now but just in case I installed a 140W solid panel on top of my bimini over the summer, mainly to keep my fridge going. In direct sunlight at peak times I've seen it pumping up to 8A into my house batteries which more than offsets my fridge which uses about 5A when the thermostat causes it to kick in. Obviously the fridge tends to run more in hot sunny weather which is when the solar panel also performs best. But obviously solar assistance reduces in cloudy weather and ends at dusk!

 

Having fitted the panel in peak summer when the days were long and sunny, I went from needing to run my engine twice a day for 1 hour to not needing to run it at all. In other words when I woke in the morning the AH taken out overnight from cabin lights, fridge, stereo etc were gradually replaced during the day so if I didn't move anchorage by the time dusk came I was back up to full house.

 

But now the peak sunny summer is over, I need to run the engine for about 30 mins a day to keep up - still a big improvement.

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Thanks for all your feedback on this. We have gone for a 200W panel from AA Solar in Silverdale. Judging by the comments here this should be heaps for what we need. Now for the fridge...

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would be interested in what you find re fridges, waeco? Ozefridge that Island time sells, Coleman although I am not sure if they are available in NZ, Look on ebay there are a lot of Waeco lookalikes (badge engineering perhaps) but a much larger range than we have here.

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I agree with KM on keeping the fridge full - it definitely cuts down the power reqd to run it. :thumbup:

 

I have a waeco - I have a bag of polystyrene blocks in assorted shapes and sizes - when the fridge gets low I just throw a few in to fill it right up - easy way to save heaps of power.

 

Also, stop opening the fridge every 5 minutes! :evil:  if you are going to have 2 beers, take 'em both out at the same time...........or wines or whatevers. Pet peeve of mine with my other 1/2.

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for what its worth from my experience over the last 4 years cruising. We have 2x 135W kyocera panels which by the book put out 7.4amps each but over summer in sunny northland we were getting 18.5amps out of them so pretty efficient. with 450amp/hrs of batteries we were able to run the fridge 24/7 for 6 weeks, autopilot, plotters, tv, radio, inverter running toaster and all sorts, watermaker for hours a day (got to the stage we were making so much water we were filling buckets to wash dive gear and the boat deck). the only thing to take into account is the sun has far less energy in the cooler months and we are lucky to get 7-10amps on a beautiful sunny day in autumn and spring. solar is the best way to go for power generation and we are looking at another 250amp battery and 180w flexible panel for the new dodger in currently in construction. you can never have enough free power!

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