Solar Panels on Trucks and Trailers

I guess you didn`t bother to read the entire thread or you would know I can raise them up and down.....

 

Yes another brand new Schneider trailer from the Wabash plant and I am now at home in time to watch some playoff football on my 80" big screen. If you were there, should have hollered at me on the radio. I am still one of those drivers that have my CB radio on.

 

I did learn a lesson about the Maxwell ESM and my batteries this trip that my solar panels allowed me to restart my truck.

Spent the night of 12/30/13 at Petro in Salina, KS off battery power and electric heat in the sleeper with solar panels putting most of the amp loss back in during the day of 12/31/13. Could not find load out of area that day, so ran off batteries another night after moving to a BBQ restaurant in town for dinner. Moved to the mall to watch a movie on the 1/1/14 that was turning cold and very overcast that was not good to re-charge batteries that were already low, so I got a motel room right before the blizzard hit with single digit temps all night. Next morning the truck only turned over with 1 crank with bitter cold temps. Waited 20 minutes and nothing. Moved starter cable to batteries that got me 1 cranking that almost started it. Knocked the snow off the solar panels with bright sunshine that morning, took air filter out and waited 2 hours to shoot the either to it for the one chance to crank it that worked thanks to the solar panel adding just enough amps to crank it barely.

The Maxwell ESM is great and I will never do this again, but all those short crankings with batteries very low would not let the ESM re-charge enough and was only as good as the condition of the batteries it was hooked to when it needed a full recharge. Just don't do a lot of start ups when your battery condition is low. This condition will never happen again because I usually only sit for no more than 10 hours at a time and if I do I will make sure they are recharged before the truck is switched off. About as extreme as it can get with single digit temps that once the batteries were recharged never had a problem starting again in the cold because I had a 10 hour stop in Indiana that restarted with no problem.

The solar panels work great along with battery system to sit maybe for around 20 to 24 hours in extreme cold, but more than that I will get a motel room. I did see close to 20 amps per hour reading combined on both meters from each system.

 

No I started it off the batteries and not the ESM, but once it cranked I hooked the starter cable back to the ESM.

The ESM is isolated to the Starter only with 7 AGM deep cycle batteries for the hotel loads of the truck, but the ESM does recharge off of those batteries. You always have the option of switching the positive starter cable to the battery lug on the ESM to start it off the batteries.

I sold a battery isolator I never used for $35 on E-Bay.

 

Seen over 10 amps per hour that should be higher in the summer sun. My estimate is between 20 to 30 amps per hour from both sets of panels combined under the summer sun that will be like having 2 or 3 extra batteries to compliment my 7 deep cycle AGM batteries.