Solar charging

[Pondhopper8]

How effective are on board solar panel for charging trolling battery while in use?? Any recommendations?

[Ken Lyons]

It’s like trying to fill an oil drum with a shot glass.

[acabtp]

worthless for out on the water

next to worthless for a trailered boat

marginally useful for a boat docked or on a mooring for keeping the battery topped off (bc the bilge pump may have been running)

[NJSquatch]

put the $ towards a 2nd battery

[briansnat]

It's basically a trickle charger. It won't help while out on the water. I agree with NJSquatch, invest your dough in a second battery.

[Pondhopper8]

Thanx for the input guys!!! Second battery it is!!

[Gerry Zagorski]

You’d need a lot of solar for any benefit, and even then it would be for recharging not for on demand power...

In the RV world where solar is pretty popular, the minimum suggested wattage is 200 watts worth of panels. That typically allows you to replace the power lost in your battery after using the lights and water pump each day... I would think the demands for a trolling motor would be much higher and you’d need even more...

Lastly, it’s usually not practical to install solar panels on a boat since you don’t have a large enough surface area to mount the amount of panels needed for any real benefit, other then maybe a trickle charger/maintainer.

[Charlie B]

I had a small I think 5 watt solar panel on a boat I kept docked in the water. The boat was not self bailing so the auto bilge pump was needed to get rainwater out. Other than that starting a small outboard and running a small fish finder were about the only load on the battery and I used the boat maybe once or twice a week. In my case it kept the battery topped off pretty good but I had a very limited load on the battery...Charlie