[roKWiz]

Originally Posted by Franco Cozzo

When you get to the stage where you're going to fit it out with electricals, put pen to paper about what you want and its power draw and with some number crunching thanks to ohms law it'll give you a figure you can work with in amps and it'll give you an idea on how much batteries you want (batteries are relatively cheap) and how much solar you'll need - 120W worth of panel is 10A worth of juice on paper in a perfect world (you know how it is, efficiency losses in real world, shaded panels etc)

Remember if you use lead acid batteries you'll need to vent them to atmosphere as well.

Also if you use lead acid batteries for them to live longer than 30 seconds you should only be draining them down to 50% SOC (ie 50% of its rating is actually usable if you want it to live).

In a yacht you should only use tinned DC wiring, otherwise you'll have a lot of corrosion in the future. I use lead acids as well but in a trailer sailor AGM batteries would be better, especially in a knockdown which does happen. Lithium marine is just too expensive ATM.

A removable stainless gantry reaching over the stern is usually the best safest place to mount solar panels on bigger yachts, I've seen several smaller ones hinging them off the pushpit rails.