Hey guys...I haven't posted here in awhile, but recently I've been experimenting with different things I can do with the solar panels I've been building. I order the cells, solder them together to get the right voltage, use a charge controller if I'm hooking it to a battery, and boom....ya got plenty of power!!! Another thing I'm going to venture into (but not really discuss here) is, putting a few deep cycle batteries under the seats and getting a 2000w inverter, putting them on a timer to warm the truck by running the block heater to it, and then recharging the batteries with the same solar panel that would trickle charge the batteries under the hood.

I work at a place where I can't plug my truck in, and in the really cold winters, sometimes my truck will barely crank over, and in rare occasions my battery will go dead. So, I took one of my 18v solar panels, put a charge controller on it and put it in the dash of the truck and noticed that not only did it start like it had a brand new set of batteries just installed, but the heat generated from the solar itself panel kept the cab from being freezing when I got in.

I'm not selling them (yet) and this isn't a marketing post by any means....but I'm trying to get a feel for a market for these, see if it's something people would buy, and then crunch some numbers and see if it's worth building and selling. If I do end of building and selling them, at this point I don't have a price for them yet because my first prototype was just basic and a rough draft, so if I do them, I'm going to do them right. So I'm going to put a poll up, and if I can make these affordable, I'd like to see how many people would buy a solar panel trickle charger that also keeps the cab from being freezing at the end of the workday.

Again, I'm NOT SELLING ANYTHING, I'm just trying to get a feel for how popular it would be.

 

Yep, RV places sell them to but they are extremely expensive. I thought about getting something like that before to keep my batteries topped off and warmed up while im out at work. My truck can sometimes sit for 3-6 days unplugged in below zero temps while im at work, so a little insurance that it will turn over when-ever i get back is nice. Mabey you can put the panels on a windshield screen or something and plug it into a cigarette port or something. I would definately buy one if it was affordable.

 

so far ive got it down to as small as 20" x 40", puts out 18v in case of cloud cover it'll still put out 14v, and will come with a charge controller to keep from burning up your batteries...I've got the cost down to $199 with a soft wooden frame to keep from scratching up the dash. All I gotta do is hinge a small 1x4 on it and it'll prop up in your windshield, and yes, as long as all dodges have the bottom cigarette lighter plug that stays on even when the key is off, then yes you can hook it into your cigarette lighter plug.