Just musing as I sit here wondering - as I can charge my engine battery from a solar panel plugged into my cigar lighter socket would it be possible to charge my leisure battery if I plug the panel into one of the 12 volt sockets from the leisure battery?
You can but if it's one of the small dashboard panels it is only going to put in a small maintenance charge, I used on on my old VW to stop the alram and radio memory draining the main battery.
Quote: Originally posted by kiev on 04/6/2007
If you can say what size / power your solar panel is, then some sort of ideas can be forthcoming. kiev
This is only a 13 watt panel I have for topping up the engine battery. I don't expect to fully charge the leisure batteries with it merely slow the rate of discharge and was wondering if I could avoid arranging connections direct to the battery by simply plugging into one of the 12V sockets - seems to my non informed view of things to be the same difference as the engine battery, but lifes never that simple.
I cant see why not. My only thought is loss of charge caused by voltage drop if used in a 12v socket, because the wiring back to the leisure battery may be quite some way, and you dont want to lose vital wattage. Idealy if you were able to measure the voltage increase via the 12v socket, and then measure the increase with a close connection on to the leisure battery and see if there is much gain.