How to rewire a Rhodes 22 sail boat with sol er panles ?

Question

How to rewire a Rhodes 22 sail boat with sol er panles ?

Answer 1

There are many options.   Which is best for you will depend on the nature of your solar cell, your battery system and use.

If you have a multiple battery system controlled by a battery switch, you may with to attached the positive to the battery switch and the negative to the common ground.  This way it will be charging whatever you have connected and can easily be turned off.

You can connect it directly to the pos and neg battery terminals, but there are two things you need to be concerned about.  The most important problem is that if the solar cell output is notable, you run the risk of overcharging and damaging your battery.   This may not be of concern if you are talking about a small cell used to trickle charge the battery when you are not on the boat, or if you are on the boat enough to monitor the charge.    Otherwise, you will need a charge regulator to be sure you don't overcharge the battery.  The other problem, you can encounter is that at night, you will slowly loose power through the cell.  Many cells come with or people add one-way diodes for this reason.  My experince is that the loss is far less than the gain, so you don't need to get too worked up about this.

On my last boat, the diodes, plug etc ended up getting all corroded and what I did was run wiring from the battery to an external cigarette type plug on an external bulk head.  This allowed me to use a large solar cell when cruising, leave a small one plugged in full time when I was away from the boat, or charge the battery here with an automotive type trickle charger without having to access the battery compartment.    I've never had a regulator and never had a problem over charging my batteries with this system.

If you haven't already done so, I recommend installing a voltmeter which gives you a good indication of your battery charge without having to test the battery.

Answer 2

There shouldn't be much rewiring as far as what's already there (I assume you have DC power and a battery). You just  need to connect the solar panels to the battery. There are some other small details, like depending on the size of the panel you may need a charge regulator to prevent overcharging the battery and a blocking diode so current doesn't flow the wrong way back into the solar panel. Try starting here: http://www.boatus.com/boattech/howto_tec... this guy has some really good articles (look for "solar panels" under the "electrical" heading).