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Thread: 12v 120 watt solar panel & mppt regulator advice

  1. #1

    12v 120 watt solar panel & mppt regulator advice

    Hi all hoping to get some advice. I am looking to put a 120-130 watt panel on the roof of the patrol to charge my 100ah aux battery that runs my thirsty 80l fridge freezer about 40ah a day and a few led lights at night. I plan to wire the panel to the regulator and than on to the battery.

    Questions
    Is my wiring correct or do i need another component in there somewhere?
    What size mppt to buy i hope to get a cheaper ebay one?
    Does anyone know of any good quality ebay panels for the right price?
    The current whitworths catalogue has 130 watt bp panels for $499 is this a good deal?

    Any feedback or advice, or something from your own experiences, would be greatly appreciated

  2. #2

    Re: 12v 120 watt solar panel & mppt regulator advice

    I have a 120 w kyocera, on a sunny day you get about 38 amps, on a cloudy day 20 amps, rainy stuff all
    I think you will be disappointed if you think it will run your fridge. Battery needs to be bigger to have some storage to compensate the solar panel. Remember if it is an agm battery you can only discharge 90 percent , wet cell 60 percent .
    I run 2 x 120 amp agm to run 80 LT engel and have genset backup/ van
    When I run the fridge in my 4by on a 200 amp agm it lasts 4 days without starting the car


    Cheers

  3. #3

    Re: 12v 120 watt solar panel & mppt regulator advice

    Quote Originally Posted by Ryan the slayer View Post
    Hi all hoping to get some advice. I am looking to put a 120-130 watt panel on the roof of the patrol to charge my 100ah aux battery that runs my thirsty 80l fridge freezer about 40ah a day and a few led lights at night. I plan to wire the panel to the regulator and than on to the battery.

    Questions
    Is my wiring correct or do i need another component in there somewhere? All OK.
    What size mppt to buy i hope to get a cheaper ebay one? 130 watt panel should be around 10 amps. Check what is written on the panel to be sure.
    Does anyone know of any good quality ebay panels for the right price?
    The current whitworths catalogue has 130 watt bp panels for $499 is this a good deal? Sounds good but cheaper panels can often be bigger in physical size.

    Any feedback or advice, or something from your own experiences, would be greatly appreciated
    Some food for thought.

  4. #4

    Re: 12v 120 watt solar panel & mppt regulator advice

    Quote Originally Posted by hakuna View Post
    I have a 120 w kyocera, on a sunny day you get about 38 amps, on a cloudy day 20 amps, rainy stuff all
    I think you will be disappointed if you think it will run your fridge. Battery needs to be bigger to have some storage to compensate the solar panel. Remember if it is an agm battery you can only discharge 90 percent , wet cell 60 percent .
    I run 2 x 120 amp agm to run 80 LT engel and have genset backup/ van
    When I run the fridge in my 4by on a 200 amp agm it lasts 4 days without starting the car


    Cheers
    Totally agree with all of this.

    I also have a 120W Kyocera and use it to run a 78L fridge. The old setup was a 180 A/hr battery (2 90's in parallel). In a perfect world (on paper!) it would put in enough amps in a sunny day to cover what the fridge took out in 24hrs. In reality this rarely happened. I typically went slowly backwards. I now use 2x120W panels and have my battery on float by morning smoko when camped on Fraser.

    As already stated, forget about solar on wet days.

    Cheers
    Craig

  5. #5

    Re: 12v 120 watt solar panel & mppt regulator advice

    MPPT is definatly the go. I use one of these on the boat and its great. Just be warned, a lot of the cheap MPPT on ebay are just linear regulators, and are not true MPPT's. I bought my MPPT of GSL Electronics, and it has been great. Cost me about $150 from memory.

    My setup is just Solar panel into MPPT into battery plus a couple of fuses in between.


  6. #6

    Re: 12v 120 watt solar panel & mppt regulator advice

    im not looking to run my fridge completely off the solar just trying to increse the time betwene long drives th charge off the car

  7. #7

    Re: 12v 120 watt solar panel & mppt regulator advice

    I think my boat (its a rag boat) has a 130ah battery plus a 40w panel. I can easy do a 3 day weekend with the auto pilot running for about 5 hours a day and the waeco going and still have enough charge to pull the keel up at the end of it.


  8. #8

    Re: 12v 120 watt solar panel & mppt regulator advice

    purchaced the pannel today a sharp 130watt paid $444 from choice electric co in murwillumbah also found mppt regulators at jaycar good discounts for group buys if anyones interested http://ausfish.com.au/vforum/showthr...ppt-regulators

  9. #9

    Re: 12v 120 watt solar panel & mppt regulator advice

    Quote Originally Posted by TheRealAndy View Post
    (its a rag boat)
    Like a fart boat

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