Adding Solar panels

As much as investing in solar power is not  an easy decision to make especially given the fairly high upfront costs, I have always been fascinated with the idea of generating your own electricity, especially while camping. In our case though, we mainly always go to campgrounds that offer all hookups so the benefits of having a solar system installed is reduced, and financially never made sense. That being said, I am curious by nature, and for some reason, the idea of having my own solar power while camping always has been on my mind.

Given I was under no stress to get it done, and that I consider myself handy enough, I had been, for some years, monitoring Craigslist and Kijiji in the hope of eventually finding a good deal, that would help reduce the upfront costs.

A few of my inquiries led nowhere until I came across a guy on Kijiji, locally selling 6 Siemens sp75 solar panels, for a total of 450 watts! The guys wanted something like 300$ for them, which is well below one dollar per watt. As a reference, full systems can be had for around 3 to 4 dollar per watt, including installation. In my case, installation was going to be done by me, but I still figured that this would be a good deal, if I could secure them.

I went to check them out and to my surprise, they were at the top of one of these roadside signs that you see advising you of roadwork, traffic and so on. The guy had bought the trailer from the city at an auction as he was planning on stripping it down to be able to convert into a regular trailer to carry around stuff. He was looking at getting rid of the stuff on it, and me offering to buy the panels off of him sounded like a great idea.

The beast is what I called the sign with the panels, and it contained many pieces that I found interesting, especially for my solar project. Indeed, it had many deep cycle batteries (8 of them, all 6 volts Interstate U2200) along with a charge controller, that was also hooked to a computer interface, that allowed the operator to select how the sign would be used, to display what, at what time and so on.

The beast, an old solar powered road sign, with all the goodies!
 

I needed assistance from my brother to disassemble the panels from the trailer, and after 3 hours, the panels were home. I also brought back plenty of cable to use, the solar charge controller, and 4 interstate us2200 deep cycle batteries. I did not know how much use I could get out of them but I figured for the price I was paying (20$/battery) I was not risking much.

I ended up taking the entire brain of the road sign, and left with the display and the control board, which had an actual keyboard to control the system.

The parts I was able to salvage from this find:

• 4 interstate U2200 deep cycle batteries
• 6 Siemens 12V 75W SP-75
• One solar charger/controller (Custom made by Ver-Mac Industries)
• One Iota DLS-55
• 25 feet of an outdoor rated  cable with four  #10 awg wires and 2 #12 awg

All of this for a mere 400$. Not too bad at all.

A piece of advice for those that may want to do the same: make sure you can test the used panels before buying them to make sure they work. In my case, the whole system was up and running, charging the batteries, so that was good.

Mounting the panels on an RV roof can be a challenge since a lot of people are afraid of making holes in the roof's membrane. I researched and debated a great deal as to whether or not I should use screws, along with the proper Dicor sealant.

As for mounts, I looked at various options but I wanted the flexibility to change the inclination of the panel if I did so wanted, and the available solutions end up being very expensive if you have more than one or two panels. I decided on my own design, and I ordered the aluminum parts from an local Metal market, which ended up working great. Is aluminum strong enough? If you go with the right thickness it can be. You can ask Ford that just came out with their redesigned F-150 which has a great deal of the structure made in aluminum, shaving as astounding 700 pounds of the vehicle's weight. If it is strong enough for Ford, it is strong enough for my solar panels!