I moved this morning, I went back to Quartzsite and I'm camped at the high jolly Boondocking area. I figure I'll be here three or four days before I go to Phoenix for the holidays.
I've been giving some thought to getting another solar panel, I've got a good spot on the roof for one more and I think that will be all that will fit up there at least in the 140 Watt size that's up there now. The panels have worked well but when it's cloudy they start to fall behind in keeping the battery charged up with my normal usage. But I have learned that they do better if the trailer is parked pointing north and south, the roof is sloped from the front to the back and parking North and South gives the panels a little better angle on the sun that's a little low in the sky and not directly overhead. Parking that way is not a problem while boondocking, I can park anyway I want but dry camping in a parking lot like I just did in Laughlin Limited me to an east west orientation. And that cut back on my power production somewhat. If I'm going to add a panel Quartzsite is an excellent place to do it, there are bunches of vendors here selling everything imaginable for RVs and since solar panels are very popular in the desert everything I need to do the job is readily available. Bear in mind I'm being overly picky about the solar panels, not once have I run out of power I've never even come close to running out of power, but I can see that that's a possibility if I had maybe three days of clouds and not much sunshine. And the more panels you have the quicker you can catch up when the sun comes out. Another thing I'm considering is making a couple of the panels tilt so I can aim them at the sun, doing that radically increases their output. I was hoping I could avoid that so I don't have to crawl around on the roof putting panels up and down but that's actually what most people do. I guess if I had to get up there and point two panels it wouldn't be too bad, but moving six panels up and down is not something I'm willing to do.
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