Solar 1.1 Reviewed

We have been very happy with the performance of our system. The back to back to back rainy days in Alaska demonstrated the shortcomings of our limited battery bank – nothing a future change to Lithium can’t solve!

The Renogy and SunPower panels performed really well. We didn’t tilt the panels as much as we expected, but that seemed to be more of a function of how often we moved. The only drawback to the lightweight flexible panels was their light weight! We were often in windy areas so the panels and camp chairs would be blown over. A rigid suitcase setup would not have had that issue and could even be left out overnight provided it was secured from theft. Our Victron charge controller provided enough information to calculate our daily power consumption and the Smart Battery Sense’s thermometer capability was an nice way to lazily check the outside temperature. It has to be also said that our addition of USB and 12V sockets as well as finding a 12V power supply for our HP laptops was a significant efficiency improvement over using the inverter.

At present, the only thing we would change, as far as the solar goes, would be to add that 6th panel for an even 600 watts on the roof.