Storage for the HF Solar Panels

Saturday: Another hot sunny day here in the Metro Denver area.

I went to the storage yard and cleaned up the URRV from the last outing today, dumped tanks also.

In a previous post, I'd talked about trying out Solar Power by buying the 100 Watt Solar Panel Kit from HF (Harbor Freight).

So far, so good, it does OK in terms of powering things but not sure it's able to power the electronics/fan/fridge in propane mode and such while also recharging the house battery.  I think 200 watts would be better but that will have to wait till I replace the aged house battery first.

I'd been carrying the components of this solar panel kit in their original cardboard inserts within their shipping box.  A bit unwieldy and heavy to be schlepping into and out of the RV I must admit.

It's also been carried inside and stored on the bunkhouse area at first, then by the stove in the kitchen area lately.  The first got it out of the way but it was a pain to heft it up there and get it back down.

I'm going to try carrying instead in the trailer as shown below, basically right under the center point of the sidecar rig.  I'll be able to leave it in place and unload/load the rig I believe, we'll see how it works in practice.  The red lines are just to highlight the outlines/dimensions of the box the panels came in.

I'll be getting a large zippered duffel bag to store the box in to keep it out of the weather and prying eyes while traveling.  If it starts raining, I'll have to stop, move it inside during the rain as the duffel bag I got is just water resistant.

As you can see, lots of room

I'll use the same strap I use to keep the leveling steps

from bouncing off the trailer.

source: amazon

Tuesday: Spent some more time tidying things up in the URRV while its stored at the storage yard.  Another trip coming soon!

Decided to chance it and deployed the solar panels on the trailer, to let it keep the house battery charged up.  I am figuring if someone is someone with access to the storage yard, and wants to be a criminal to steal 25 Watt Solar Panels, then its karma.

A theft of these panels would motivate me to get perhaps the 200 Watt Renogy Suitcase Panel Kit as a replacement.

And no, RichardM, still not mounting them on the roof.  :)   I simply like the idea of no further holes on the roof, being able to deploy them where the sun is shining and deploying/packing them up takes less than 10 minutes.

Gave it some thought also to mounting them permanently on the trailer; after all there's floor space available that isn't used by the rig when its on the trailer.  However, what if the URRV is parked so that it blocks the sun?  Then what?  Detach the trailer and move it?  Now that would be a PITA.