If you’re an avid camper, then do doubt you’ll have invested in, or are likely to invest in, a camping solar panel – or even a solar blanket for camping. Being able to plug your solar into your battery via your solar regulator to keep it topped up the entire time you’re camping is an amazing way to take one of the biggest stresses out of camping – that is your auxiliary deep cycle battery going flat! There’s nothing worse than the dreaded E1 error code on your camping fridge meaning that it’s not getting enough voltage – a sure-fire sign that your deep cycle battery has gone flat. Instead, just plug in your camping solar blanket and it’ll trickle charge your battery as long as the sun is out!

But therein lies the rub – a solar panel for camping can obviously only produce power as long as the sun is shining. If it’s an overcast day you’re not going to get full power going to your batteries, and even if the sun is out then it may only stay shining for a couple of hours at a time before the clouds roll in. Like the old saying goes, if one is good then two must be better right? But does that apply to camping solar panels – i.e. can you run two solar panels while you’re camping for maximum charging of your second battery?

The short answer is yes – with a big emphasis on the fact that you need to do it the right way. There are two main different ways that you can run two camping solar panels to charge a battery – so let’s look at how to ensure each setup is done correctly.

1. COMBINATION OF FIXED OR SEMI-FLEXIBLE SOLAR PANEL, PLUS A PORTABLE SOLAR PANEL KIT

I run a semi-flexible solar panel on the roof of my DMAX that puts power down into an MPPT solar regulator. This charges my second battery every minute the sun is shining on it. It’s a 110w panel that puts out around six amps in full sunlight, but often that isn’t enough to keep my second battery topped up completely – because I often find myself camping in weather that isn’t ideal, but I’m not going to go home just because the sun isn’t shining!

In that case, I carry a Kings 250w Solar Blanket with MPPT Regulator that I fold out and sit down on the ground. While the MPPT regulator connected to the semi-flexible solar panel on my roof is wired directly to my battery, there isn’t any drama connecting a second portable solar panel kit as long as you’re using the included regulator! I’ll explain the setup a little better using an analogy in a moment, but first let’s look at the other way to connect two camping solar panels together to the one battery.

2. TWO PORTABLE SOLAR PANEL KITS CHARGING THE ONE BATTERY

The other way to connect two camping solar panels together is simply to use two portable solar panel kits that both have their own regulator and alligator clips, and simply connect them both to your battery – both red alligator clips to the red positive terminal and both black alligator clips to the black negative terminal! It doesn’t even really matter if you can only physically fit one set of alligator clips directly onto the battery terminals and the other have to connect to the first set of alligator clips. The solar regulators both have safeties built into them that prevent current from reverse flowing back up into the panels, and both will eventually even themselves out to deliver similar rates of charge but never more than the battery needs.

THE ‘FILLING A FUEL TANK WITH MULTIPLE FUEL PUMPS’ ANALOGY

Think about the whole setup of running multiple camping solar panels like this. Imagine that your battery is a large fuel tank, and the fuel inside it is the electricity being stored within. As you drive along you’re depleting the fuel within the tank (the voltage within the battery) and so you connect your fuel pumps (in this case, the solar panels) to re-fill the tank. The same as the fuel pump at your local service station has splashback protection to shut off the pump when it senses the fuel tank is full, so too does your camping solar panel have protection built into it to sense when your battery is full and reduce or even stop the charge going into your battery. Running multiple solar blankets for camping is the same as using two fuel pumps to fill up your fuel tank – as long as both camping solar panels use a solar regulator to control the charge, it will be safe to connect both up at the same time.

HOW MANY SOLAR PANELS CAN YOU CONNECT AT ONCE?

What about even more camping solar panels connected together? The sky is the limit, figuratively. Multiple solar panels each running off their own regulator can only ever put in what the battery needs, and will even themselves out to generally speaking all put in an even amount of power each. So if your battery needs 10 amps and you’ve got two panels, they’ll eventually settle around putting in about 5 amps each. Many caravanners run up to three or four panels on the roof of their caravan to really top up the electrical power of their battery bank (typically multiple batteries) whenever the sun is shining, and often will connect a couple of identical fixed solar panels to an appropriately sized solar regulator. The key takeaway from this that you must remember however, is that word – regulator! As long as your portable solar panels are all connected to your battery via a regulator, you have a safe-guard against over-charging.