"Free" Power

We have been talking about adding solar panels to our boat since before we owned one. The idea of harnessing the wind for transportation and sun for power is as romantic to us as red roses and long walks on the beach.

The time was right when we moved to Alaska, anticipating leaving Halcyon on anchor by herself for a few months with no power hookup. Having worked with solar power at PacificWILD, we already had an idea what we wanted and a relationship with a distributor. So, using some of our (oh-so-generous) wedding gifts, we made a great big order with Arizona Wind and Sun and then eagerly waited for the enormous boxes to arrive.

Technicalities:

~We purchased two Kyocera 140 watt panels (these should produce more power than we should need for our system…unless we live where the sun always hides…)

~And a Tristar MPPT 45 amp solar controller (MPPT makes it the most efficient solar controller there is. If you’re gonna do it, do it right, right?)

~We also got a small 10 watt panel and solar controller to keep our start battery topped up.

~An apparently endless spool of cable and a handful of fuses, and we were set.

We mounted the solar controller next to our Magnum charger/inverter, wired and fused the battery connection and the panel connection, and ran the cables into the cockpit as discreetly as possible. We wired the two main panels in series (and the cute little start battery panel on its own), and flipped the switch. No lightbults exploded and there was no smoke, so we considered it a success. Seeing a charge coming in would have been even better, but of course the sun was buried deep in the clouds.

That was the easy part. What we had been struggling over for months was how to attach the panels to the boat. Without a hard dodger or arch over the stern, there are not many stationary places that are both out of the way and in the sun. With them mounted on the lifelines, the new challenge becomes a mechanism that holds them out when it’s sunny/calm and folds them flat when it is rough.

We threw something together for the summer/trip south, knowing it would not be permanent. The edge of the panel bolted onto a piece of PVC, through which we strung the lifeline. That allowed the panels to hang down the side of the boat.

John then resourcefully used an extendable paint brush holder mounted to the rail to prop the panels out. It works, but it’s a bit unstable (solid lifelines would be much better), and the paintbrush holder is already rusting (not to mention that ever-sought-after hillbilly affect).

[So if anybody has any suggestions (short of building a hard dodger or arch)…I’d love to hear what you have done, what has worked, what hasn’t. ]

Finally, almost three months after installation, we got to see the panels at work- powering our batteries while we sat quietly at anchor. It is, indeed, a wonderfully romantic thought. Now if we could just get the wind to blow the right way….