Simple Solar Panel Mount

I don’t understand the urge to put solar on a rig. Under the hood is a gas powered motor with a alternator, this quickest easiest way to make power.

I have sailed to Hawaii from the west coast 6 times. The only time we had to ration power was when we went solar. The other 5 trips we just charged for like 1 hour per day in neutral at like 1800 rpms.

Don’t get me wrong I have solar on the roof of my house and solar has its place. On top of an internal combustion engine is not one of them.

 

So the reason I went with solar for my Tacoma is three fold:
1) I needed a decent capacity battery to run a fan, lights, and charge devices as necessary (glampy? Maybe, but it's what makes it fun instead of work for my wife and I to camp for a weekend). LiFePO4 can do an 80% discharge consistently without damage and weighs about 1/3 as much as lead acid which can only do MAYBE a 50% discharge without damage in the long run. I need the battery to be light and safe because it's mounted in the cab of my truck (the bed needs to be able to haul or camp depending on what it's set up for so it needs to be empty of permanent fixtures, especially fragile ones) and in the event of an accident, the smaller/lighter the projectile and the less full of acid it is, the better.
2) To charge the lithium iron phosphate battery that I selected for reasons above, you need a DC-DC charger (or other smexy power makey mabob) to provide the correct juice to charge the battery without damage as they're more finicky than a lead acid and can't just be hoooked straight to the alternator generally. The DC-DC chargers I have seen, and I am admittedly an amateur so please correct me if I'm wrong, look like they pull a consistent current off the alternator whether you're idling or hitting the rev limiter. I'm not sure how much is safe to pull off the stock alternator while idling for any length of time.
3) MOST IMPORTANTLY! I'm lazy and don't want to have to think about starting up the truck while I'm camping to keep the fan on and the cell phone charged.

 

Have you read this write up on using a lithium battery with a lead acid starting battery. Granted you would need a BMS but this is a lot cheaper than a solar system. https://shop.pkys.com/Alternator-Lithium-Battery.html

I think the biggest problem you will have with solar is you will need a big bank of panels to get any real charge into the system. I would build out a power budget and figure out how much power you are going to use and how much you are going to make, they should net out to about zero if you plan to be away for any length of time.

For the 2016 Pac Cup we figured we would use 16.3 amps a day, and generate 15 amps a day. We acutely used 8.3 amps but were only making 2.5 amps a day, it was really hard to keep the panel in the sun 100% of the time. On our set up if even one cell was shaded power generation fell quickly, granted boats have a lot more to block the sun than cars, just giving you my real wold observations on solar.

 

I don't know if I could describe that as a mount. lol

 

Good points but it suits my needs as I am just trying to build a weekend camping machine. Burn through the battery over the weekend and let it charge passively until the next trip without having to burn any fuel or any extra strain on my alternator. If I had to rely on it for any real length of time and didn't want to ration my power carefully I would probably have to add a DC-DC charger to my system. Luckily it'll be an easy addition if I ever need to.

Did you have your panels in series or parallel? Mine are paralleled to mitigate the shading problem you mentioned.

 

We had our panels set up as individual systems each had its own charge controller so one panel would not impact the other and if a charger controller failed we had a back up.

 

Smart. I'm given to understand that Amazon doesn't deliver to the middle of the pacific.

 

Funny Amazon won’t deliver, but the coast guard did have to drop medical supplies to one boat in the race. C-130 750 miles out of Honolulu, impressive.

https://youtu.be/EaUeg2afd5s