UKC

I'm after a bit of advice on this. I'm looking for something to keep our leisure battery topped up while we're away. We only really use the lights a bit and water pump a bit, and occasional phone charge, so it doesn't need to be too powerful I don't think. But equally it looks like there's a lot of crap out there on the market which will probably not really do what I want. Ideally I'd like something that folds away neatly, and you just stick on the windscreen or whatever while out for the day.

Any recommendations? 

I got one from Halfords, something like £30, 8Watts, for precisely this reason about 5 years ago – to sit on the dashboard and keep the leisure battery topped up. Mine doesn't fold up – it's perhaps 70 cm x 35 cm – but I slide it at the bottom of a cupboard and sit other things on it, it's sturdy & durable. Came with crocodile clips to go direct to the battery and also a plug for the lighter socket (which would charge the main van battery), and a decent length of cable. Very happy with it, keeps the lights on and the pump running.

How long are you away for? The lights should take very little from the leisure battery, if you need to charge your phone a few times you could get a couple of Anker power banks for about £30 each which should see you fine for 6-8 charges.

I thought my leisure battery was shot but found out the built in charger wasn’t any good so I was only getting it around 30-50% full, so I got a decent smart charger.

We can run the fridge and a few lights and a few phone charges for around 10 days now with a 220Ah battery.

If you think you might want more power in future some of the flexible panels are pretty good now. Can stick them to the roof of the van with double sided tape and don’t have to keep getting them out and putting away then. Plus doesn’t matter which way around you are parked. Maybe worth a look?

I have some from photonic universe website I just fitted to mine a couple months back. Very happy so far.

I've a flexible panel (100w dokio) thats waterproof and sits on the roof of the van with suction pads when I'm not using it (would love to make it permanent if I can summon up he courage to put holes in the roof).

Also a foldable one from lensun, also 100w. This doesn't take up much room and fits nicely along the windscreen inside and out.

For ones these size you'll need a controller too, I've a victron mppt one with Bluetooth monitoring. You can get much cheaper pwm controllers for a lot less money and are sometimes bundled in.

Then I've crocodile clips for the battery and also a fag lighter attachment.

Make sure you get one with a diode in the circuit otherwise when it's dark your battery will start discharging into the photocell.

I'd recommend a 100 W semi-flexible panel, along with a decent MPPT charge controller (I like the Victron stuff, all Bluetooth these days to set charging parameters etc).  About £100 for the panel; it won't fold but it is very thin and will slide in under something somewhere.   

If you're not roof mounting it, you could make a foldable wooden "wedge" mount to let you angle it towards the sun - if you make it about 30º then you can point the panel either 30º from the vertical or the horizontal, and you can rotate it to point it in the other axis as well...  Probably OTT for what you need....    The wedge can be made out of 2x2 with fold-out legs so it packs down small.

(I use this for a solar power station for charging electric power tools out and about rather than a camper, the MPPT really helps with cloud days and a bit of pointing control goes a long way for getting gob loads of power when the sun is out).

(Edit: reading the thread all of this has already been said... +1 for Victron gear though, really well built)

Interesting. Having driven home last night for 4 hours and the battery is still flat, I've realised the problem is as you said and it's not charging. So will look at that. What's a smart charger and is it an easy thing to install?

Assuming you mean the leisure battery is flat do you have a dc-dc charger so that it gets charged whilst driving? Mine went funny the other week, turned out the fuse had worked itself loose.

Smart charger - plugs into a normal socket and then you hook it up to your battery +ve and -ve terminals (or common earth)

Yep loads of info online on this subject but if you have an old style split charger / voltage sensitive relay they won’t work with a lot of modern cars as smart alternators don’t hit the voltage needed to trigger them. DC to DC chargers overcome this but if you want one that does solar as well you need one with mppt (or one device for each).

oh and remember that you can’t turn off a solar panel, if it’s light it’s live, probably not an issue for a folding Halfords type one but if you sticking 100w plus on the roof bear that in mind when wiring it in safest to get wires right then connect the panel up last.