Every year I think I'm gonna mount a couple solar panels to the top of the radar arch on Endless Summer but never seem to get around to it. THIS year I've deliberately given myself about three weeks of time between when she comes out of winter storage to when she's launched, for projects, etc... (seems I'm not as motivated once she's in the water to tackle larger projects!) West Marine's got the panels I've been eye-balling all winter on sale through the 27th of March here;
http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs...classNum=10545.
Does anyone have any experience mounting these? I can tell I'm going to need regulators for each panel (I plan on mounting two panels, one for each battery) as they can over-charge my batteries evidently (15 Watts total possible output, per panel). The radar arch is too narrow (forward to aft direction) for them to fit perfectly, so I'm going to have to create a custom bracket of sorts for them to "overlap" the bimini top (which we essentially leave up all season-long), and I also anticipate the curvature of the arch itself (center to port and center to starboard) will have to be taken into account... but based on how lousy our batteries perform every Summer I think a couple of solar panels mounted up and out of the way would be ideal for us.
Anyone ever done this?
Solar Panel mounted on radar arch
Linear Mode
