Solar panel and leisure battery

[Morrisman]

Hi
I am looking for a way of charging my leisure battery with sunlight, perhaps using the roof window to fit a solar panel, anyone have any experience with this?
Cheers
Morrisman

[teenmal]

Hi Morris,Great idea.
Worth a try,could be left up there if you have enough clearance when roof closed.(aft).

Cheers Mal.

[dandywarhol]

I used a 12w panel on the roof but to be honest it didn't give much assistance to the battery. I sat on it recently. cracked it and didn't bother replacing it. I reckon you'd need at least 20W to make a significant charge.

[dreamwarrioruk]

you would probably need to cover the roof in solar panels to be any good to charge a lb.

[madmile]

I agree with Dreamwarrior - A panel to give sufficient charge to make it useful would be at least 3 or 4 ft long and cost several hundred pounds to set up. The small 'top up' style ones are just a gimmick and not worth having (unless you are laying a van up for 6 months). The suitcase style will just take up more space than you can afford and still are unlikely to really help with your charging anymore than 10mins with the engine running.
Unless you are wild camping in the sahara desert for months on end I would not get too tempted by solar power .

[waycar8]

the small ones you see on ebay and maplins are basically just to trickel charge, a friend bought one for his boat which is kept on a trailer most of time so he uses it just stop his battery from dishcharging totally and killing it.

as previousy said, if you want to charge a LB using solar energy, you will need an expensive system which dreamwarrior said you would have to cover the roof to get a sufficent charge

[timhum]

Also, you will be obliged to park in full sunshine rather than finding a shady place to park!
Tim