Solar panels for campers: The basics

The charge of a trailer house battery doesn’t last forever, especially if your RV is equipped to the teeth. It means that you need to stop along the way in search of battery hookups or smelly gas generators. Solar panels for RVs and campers have become a great alternative to that and here is why:

• Solar panels are silent and they don’t have any smell;
• They don’t need fuel and work as long as there is daylight;
• Usually solar panels are installed on the roof of a trailer which isn’t used for anything else.

The first thing that you have to decide is the type of panel. They differ in weight, size, output and longevity.

Flexible solar panels for campers are easy to install on an RV – using strong adhesives is usually enough. Since they bend well, you can even put them on a roof with unusual configurations. They are also light and fairly small. Usually they provide small power output – 100-200 Watts, but you don’t really need a lot of power for an RV system. Thin-film panels usually last for 10-15 years.

Rigid panels, polycrystalline or monocrystalline, are larger in size and heavier. Installing them usually requires drilling. These panels are much higher in power output: 300-500W. Even one module can be enough for everything you have. A rigid solar panel has an aluminum frame and the cells are protected by tempered glass so extreme weather conditions aren’t a threat to them. Mono- and poly-panels last for over 25 years.

While all solar panels are made to withstand hail, harsh winds and rain, they vary in their mechanical resistance. The bare minimum for a solar panel is around 2400 Pa of front load which is roughly equivalent to 140 mph wind. However, we recommend picking sturdier solar panels for an RV, since the road might be bumpy and tornado seasons are a real thing in the US.

Depending on the area where you live, you might want to pick panels with good performance in low light conditions or improved tolerance to high temperatures. Take a look at half-cut cell design – it gives panels a better shading resistance.

To figure out the size of solar panels for your travel trailer, write down all the appliances in your van, their power consumption and number of hours in use per day. Another way to do it would be to take a test ride with a fully charged battery and see how much of its charge you’ve spent during the day. Find all the necessary formulas and calculations in this article.

Remember that RV moves around all the time. As a result, the positioning and angling of your panels are destined to be imperfect, thus your system is going to perform at 60-80% of its capacity. Thus we recommend picking panels with a bit of extra power just to be sure. Your panels don’t have to be powerful, but they better be efficient, because space is a resource in itself when it comes to RVs.

Solar system doesn’t consist of solar panels only. You’ll also need a charge controller, a small off-grid inverter and a house battery which an RV usually already has. A pre-packed solar kit can be a great choice for a mobile installation since it has all the necessary parts of installation already sized together. There are kits with so-called portable solar panels for campers that you can pack and unpack whenever it’s needed.

The two markets of rigid and thin-film solar panels are completely different: generally, the brand that puts out monocrystalline modules doesn’t make flexible panels. In this article we’ll talk primarily about rigid panels – it’s a matter of preference, but we found them to be a bit more reliable. They take a bit more effort to set up, but it’s worth it.

The market of rigid solar panels is wide: the majority of panels come from Chinese manufacturers and there are several North American brands with a good reputation. Chinese panels are the cheapest: the cost per watt may range from $0.5 to $0.8. American-made panels are slightly more expensive, but their quality is higher. Campers often pick Canadian Solar panels for their high performance in cloudy weather. Norwegian PV modules by REC are also a good choice – they are sturdy and efficient. Silfab, Q CELLS, Panasonic are also the brands that we can recommend.

You might ask, which are the brands and panels that we wouldn’t pick? High output and bifacial modules from JA Solar, Jinko and Trina Solar don't really fit the job: their output is too high for the needs of an RV and they might turn out to be slightly flimsy. Given the situation, the brands with premium-class panels for home systems aren’t the best choice either – for example, Solaria. Solaria panels are sturdy, efficient and have improved shading resistance, but they are a bit too fancy and expensive to put on an RV.

When picking solar panels for a camper trailer, keep in mind that warranties most likely won't play a role, since they usually apply only for residential/commercial solar systems. RV systems also aren’t eligible for Federal Solar Tax Credit and other incentives that are offered by the state and utility companies.

We’ve asked our engineer to pick a few models that he considers to be the best solar panels for campers. Here is what we’ve got from him.