solar panel to charge battery on mooring

[garyw]

hi
this year i will have my catalina 34  1986  on a mooring. it has 3 27 group batteries.  1 is for starting, the other 2 are backup.   I have no power requirements other then the bilge pump.   will not be charging refrigerator.   what is recommended for a trickle charge solar panel in terms of watts ,  rigid or flexible panel.   is it better to just charge the starter battery by itself?

thanks

gary w
catalina 34
summer wind 

[NewToTheRoad]

Hi Gary,
  I just went through the same process that you are going through.  You might want to take a look at my thread  http://c34.org/bbs/index.php/topic,9283.0.html

  I ended up going with a 50w Flex solar panel ($95) and a BlueSolar MPPT charge controller ($99) both purchased from Amazon.  I installed the panel on a bracket on my stern rail and the charge controller under the nav station desk.  It went fairly easily for a novice like myself.  I'm pretty happy so far.  In 2 days it took the battery up to full charge.  I don't have a battery monitor but the controller indicated Full Charge.

note:  I only have it hooked to 1 battery right now.  At some point I will put in the Echo charger.  In the interim I might try leaving the switch on "Both" which will charge both batteries.  There are pros\cons to that.  I have a spare battery (to be wired as my dedicated starter) in the event that I screw up and drain both.

I will try and upload an image.  Let's see if it works.
Bryan

[garyw]

thanks 
i will look at your posts and maybe can follow up with you for more questions .

[NewToTheRoad]

Absolutely Gary.  Will help as much as I can.  I learned everything from this site myself.  Once I started researching I found that the 50W didn't cost much more (Amazon or Ebay pricing) and sometime a lot less than some of the smaller panels touted as trickle type chargers.  I found the 50W flex to be a good compromise and one that is expected to meet my power needs and then some.  Probably overkill but the extra juice will just top off my batteries all the quicker or just be less conservative.  It's also easily expandable if I wanted to go with more or larger panels as the controller is rated at up to 200W.  I opted for mounting on the back rail ($30 bracket on Amazon) but you can go bigger and more stealthy on top of your bimini\dodger.  I would have done that with 100W flex panels

Here's a great link from the Electrical Systems 101 thread on this site.  It will give you a great primer on the topic.

http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/solar_panel