Solar battery charging
 

Anybody use a solar panel to charge/maintain their boat batteries? My storage unit only has power on a 14 minute timer but they said I could put a solar panel on the roof and run a cable inside. I don't have any experience with solar but I'm looking at it as an option to keep my dual batteries charged.

Thanks for the input!

I haven't done it myself, but have played with the idea before.
A cheap, effective setup would be
http://www.harborfreight.com/15-watt...nel-96418.html
coupled with
http://www.harborfreight.com/7-amp-s...tor-96728.html
to prevent overcharging the batteries.

It won't be a quick charge by any means, but will work as a float charger.
Also I'm assuming the timer for the unit is one of those twist timers where you use it like an egg timer and it goes off after it gets back to zero.
Is there any reason you can't just like tie it to one side with a string or something to have it constantly on?

Thanks for the input PhaTHom haha. The reason I can't really mess with the timer is because its mounted on the outside of the unit and one timer runs a few units I believe. I have thought about trying to find a 6 hour timer and just swapping the guts out one day so no one would know but that's not my first choice. I figured a solar panel always trickle charging would be a better option. I found some Battery Tender brand panels on amazon with a built in controller that might do the job for $50-$100 depending on how many watts I need.

Here's a 5 amp, 68 watt panel but it's $445:
http://www.batterystuff.com/solar-chargers/BSP60WK.html
Are you looking to charge stereo batteries? If so, I don't feel like the 15 watt panel is going to do it for you.

^Holy $***. Amazon has a 100w one for $170.

I don't have a dedicated bank of batteries or anything like that. I just have dual group 24 batteries hooked to a perko switch. I'll be replacing the regular 24's with dual purpose deep cycle group 24's soon

I'd go with that $170 if you can swing it!