Oh F*** NRs Solar panel has arrived and ....

[Mortblanc]

A car battery is a temporary fix but is not designed to draw down to dead, then recharge over and over like a deep cycle battery is intended. A vehicle battery must have some amount of charge in it before it will accept the low volume solar output.

With solar one makes decisions not based as much on the watts provided but by the amps used at the end of the circuit. If one is thrifty and keeps up with amps consumed from the Deep cycle battery is is possible to know how many hours one has in reserve.

I have found that it works best if one uses 12v appliances rather than trying to hook in an inverter, which eats power on its own. It takes a massive amount of power to operate through an inverter and power regular appliances.

My best effort was running on solar from April till October of 2002 and never completely discharging the battery using only a 2 amp/hr 12v pannel on. No other power scource was available. I was using all 12v lights/appliances and even had a 12v TV.

NR, I take it that this is your first solar pannel?