I keep seeing people post about a on board charger. How does this work? I thought about getting a solar panel to trickle charge it when sitting on the water
A solar panel will be of no value in helping to charge the battery while on the water.
An on-board charger is just a battery charger mounted in the boat and connected directly to the battery, you just plug it in when you get home. When I was young I had a late 50's 18hp Johnson with electric start and no charging system, we just charged it every few weeks as needed.
OK I understand the on board charger now. What if I got a solar panel that would operate a battery tender ? Or would I have to have a larger panel for that?
Actually, a solar tender is a perfectly reasonable thing. We have one on our 1200 gallon farm fuel trailer that we use every day during the summer. We pump 300-600 gallons daily, the trailer has 2 large batteries in it, and a solar panel no larger than 3'x2'. We have never once had the batteries run out, and we never charge them with anything but the solar panel. It's worked flawlessly since we got it some 3 or 4 years ago.
The math doesn't lie, if it works for you then you are using less power than the panel is supplying during the down time. For continuous use of an electric trolling motor a small cheap panel isn't going to help.
If he was asking for the purpose of continuous use then I misunderstood. I thought he was saying he wanted it to keep the battery full without having to put a charger on it, as a maintainer.
Yes cumminschris. Your correct I sit in one spot for long periods of time swimming or fishing. And was wondering if a small 1 or 2 amp solar panel would be worth purchasing. Just to build up or maintains the battery while not in use .
Well I was actually thinking of trying to get something to put on my boat to run like a battery tender or something. Just to trickle charge it while the suns out and I'm on the water. I have a charger at home but was thinking of trying to rig something up for the water for emergency purposes
An 18W solar panel will supply slightly more 1A of current. If you have a 60A battery that is discharged 50%, it will take 6 days to charge assuming 5 hours a day of sun(5 hours is an average number and will vary for time of year and latitude).
