How to Mount Solar Panels on a Sail Boat
With the electronics on a modern sailboat, you may depend on the wind to move you from destination to destination, but the electronics depend on batteries that need to stay charged. Running a generator to keep your batteries charged has two effects: It disturbs the quiet sound of sailing that's available only on a sailboat, and it can cost as much as 12 gallons of fuel for every day you sail. One proven alternative to a noisy, fuel-drinking, money eating boat generator is a solar panel.
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Instructions
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Find a location that's not shaded by spars, masts or antennas. Since solar panels perform best when perpendicular to the sun's rays, this means that you might consider placing the panel on a cabin top, hanging the panel over your stern (the back of the boat) or side, or setting the panel atop your tallest mast, whether that be your main mast or mizzenmast.
Remember that a solar panel is not small: one 130 watt panel is almost 5 feet long (56.1 inches) and more than 2 feet wide (25.7 inches)
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Attach the mounting frame to the chosen location according to the instructions provided with the frame. The frame is essential--even if you decide to mount the panel to a cabin top or on the deck, the panel has to have room beneath it, so that air can circulate around it and reduce overheating, which reduces the efficiency of the panel.
Usually, this involves little more than drilling pilot holes in the surface where you plan to station the frame, setting the frame in place, and using a wrench to bolt the frame to the deck, cabin top or other flat surface.
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Attach the solar panel to the mounting frame according to the frame instructions.
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Connect one wire of an in-line fuse to the positive post of the battery and connect the other wire of the in-line fuse to the red (positive) lead from the solar panel. As Don Casey, the boating expert for the Boat Owners Association of the United States, says in his article on installing solar panels, a fuse located as close to the battery as possible is essential: "Without a fuse, a short in the wiring is a dead short across the battery, with fire a likely consequence."
Connect the negative (black or green) lead from the solar panel to your boat's common ground.
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Tips & Warnings
The optimum size for a solar panel's maximum output is about 1 percent of your battery's capacity. If you have multiple batteries, your solar panel's maximum output should be 1 percent of their total capacity, and one solar panel can charge the battery bank.
Place a diode on the positive side of the circuit to keep current loss--a backflow from batteries to panel at night--if you are using a single solar panel to charge multiple banks of batteries. Casey suggests using low-loss Schottky diodes and reminds the boat owner that "the marked end of the diode (or the point of the arrow) goes on the battery side."
