Solar Panels

A solar panel on your motorhome is a great way to extend your offsite camping stops by harnessing the power of the sun to recharge your leisure battery. Solar panels come in a variety of sizes and a couple of types. The two types of rigid panels are mono or poly crystalline. Mono crystalline are made from single crystals and poly are made from multiple crystals, simple as that. In general terms mono are the better panel size for size but the difference is small. All of our panels are mono crystalline type.

A solar panel should always be connected via a solar regulator because the voltage produced at the panel itself will be too high for direct connection to a battery. The regulator reduces that voltage but also will cut off the charge as and when the battery is fully charged. As with the panels there are different types of regulators available, the most commonly used type are PWM (Pulse Width Modulated) which is a perfectly good technology. A newer technology for regulators is MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) which claims to give better charging in lower light situations (cloudy days or winter) but of course these are much dearer units.

In a basic installation the solar regulator would be connected directly to the leisure battery or if the on board electronics of the vehicle are suitable it can be connected to the control unit (Sargent and Schaudt Elektroblock systems). We can also supply and install Schaudt’s own regulator which can then split the charge from the solar panel to both engine and leisure batteries. Where the vehicle’s electronics don’t have a connection option and are not from Schaudt we can provide and install a dual channel regulator to charge both engine and leisure batteries.