Hunter 380 Factory Installed Solar Panel

[Tom Boles]

My daughter recently bought a 1999 Hunter 380. The original solar panel.....very small, hasn't worked in some time. A replacement is available, but I am wondering if it is worthwhile to replace....being so small and being at least partially shaded by the boom, a lot of the time.

I would appreciate any advice I can get.

Thank you

T

[tkeithlu]

What do you need it for? Is she trying to keep the boat off the grid and not run a genset? She'll need a bunch more, plus a wind generator. Charge the house battery adequately to keep the bilge pump working when the boat is in storage in the water? Keep the batteries up with no expected use? A small array will do.

In the general case, there is a case, and it's for being able to have solar as one of several sources of energy (genset, wind, shore power). But, you do need to keep in mind how much energy you can get from each, and what jobs it can do for you. The general trend is to use more and more solar, because array cost per watt keeps going down, and so does the demand of things like anchor lights given LEDs and more efficent electronics..

[Nicholson58]

These older panels are ancient history technology. As new they were less than 8% efficient. Now, they are also old. Probably does not have a proper charge controller. I think many such tiny systems were planned to keep batteries topped while you were away. I would ditch it. Start new if there is need.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by Tom Boles

My daughter recently bought a 1999 Hunter 380. The original solar panel.....very small, hasn't worked in some time. A replacement is available, but I am wondering if it is worthwhile to replace....being so small and being at least partially shaded by the boom, a lot of the time.

I would appreciate any advice I can get.

Thank you

T

Near as I can tell mine still works. But if it dies I'm not going to bother replacing it.

There are a few threads of people replacing thiers on the Hunter Owner site if you are interested:

https://forums.sailboatowners.com/forums/big-boats.40/

[guyrj33]

I have one of these (Solbain all in one SP23) sitting on my cockpit locker seat, and it's awesome.
https://oceanplanetenergy.com/wp-con..._IN_ONE_en.pdf