Mobile Solar testing

I was working on my camp trailer the other day and ran a little test of my mobil solar power system.  Solar can be as complex or a simple as you want to make it.  You can get all tied up in amps, kilowatts, megajoules, and whatever, or have a little solar powered flashlight or phone charger.  Its all about capturing the sun's power for later and creating silent electricity.   For me, I'm keeping it as simple as possible, while still getting as much power as I can.  I've stayed away from inverters and all the complex stuff and focused on the 3 basic components... Generation, storage, and distribution.

I already went into detail about my distribution system, but in a nut shell, I have 12 volt cigarette plugs on long cables to distribute power around my campsite from the trailer.  Then i made sure to get cigarette plug adaptors for all my gear.

For storage i went with the biggest deep cycle marine grade battery i could find.  I got a good deal on a Durracell at Sam's club, and mounted it in a battery box in the front compartment of my trailer.  The Marine grade batteries are designed to take a pounding and to endure the moisture and extreme conditions of boating, so they are the perfect choice.

Now for generation i have an 100 watt Instaspark folding solar panel,  its rugged briefcase design works well for travel and the compartments on the back hold the alligator cables to attach to charge any battery.  It also has a built in charge controller.  I popped it up in the driveway and it quickly topped off my battery.

I can't run a house on it, but its perfect to charge batteries for flashlights and communication gear, and I can run goal zero lights directly off of it to have light in camp.