Have a look at midsummer energy. I have the 50w panels on mine. They do 100w panels that are quite small I think
Yes they're quite local to me. Ive had a look and the size is similar to the first one but more expensive.
They have certainly come down in price when I did mine the flexible ones were nearly £400 so I had to go for a Ridged one
Yeah massively matty. Mine weigh sufficient to warrant gas struts on the roof & they cover the whole thing! Plus I had to get them from the USA as there was literally nothing available here. 2 years on & a 100 watts panel weighs, what, 3kg, fits in your back pocket & costs less than £100!
I have a cunning plan (I hope ) I intend to go through the Poptop at the back outside the curtain and where the rear X is bolted to the Poptop. Once I'm in the section between the Poptop and the van roof I'm going to attach some rubber pipe to the X and thread the cables down through that. Then another gland through the roof but still inside the area covered by the Poptop when it's down. Hopefully this will give me enough slack on the cable for the poptop to go up and down but not flapping about enough to potentially get caught and cut by the X frame. This is only a plan at the moment and I haven't tested any of it yet. My thinking is that the X frame legs actually stay the same length whether they're up or down and each of the legs has a fixed point which doesn't move in relation to the van it just alters it's angle. I'll give it a try with hose pipe and bits of gash wire first.
Yay, I've seen this unit fitted to Bertie Bots bus & you won't be disappointed. Where are you thinking of mounting it @sANDYbAY
I'm not too sure yet. To get to the fixed bit of my Poptop frame I'll need to come in through the Poptop on the Nearside and my leisure battery is on the Nearside but all my cupboards are along the offside.
Yes you are! And one that can handle 20 amps for your additional panels that you've not yet bought. Incidentally the manuf. of sandybays controller does a 30 amp version!! So you could go for 350 watts & start feeding the grid!
I'm looking at stuffing glands at the moment, does anyone have MC4 connectors and if so are they removable? If they are I can get some tint discrete glands to fit the 2.5mm wire. If they aren't removable I'll need bigger glands so the connectors will pass through.
I could, and quite easily as my original Australian hookup went that route so I already have the holes. Thing is once I get into the engine bay where do I mount the controller so I can see and program it?
That's good to know, is this cable anything special or is it just copper wire with a good PR department.
@zedders Zed's is in his engine bay. Now they can get warm when dumping unwanted amps but due to the construction of our type of controller this won't be a problem. Could you fix it somehow to the spare wheel well in the engine bay? A nice swing out burr walnut laminated carrier? It would be hard to play with there...
