With solar power taking over the market, there are plenty of shade tree 12v electricians who will offer you stacks of advice for setting up your 12v solar power, whether they have done it before or not!

Solar power is silent and virtually cost free at camp, and this is why solar panel setups are taking over, and for this reason we are going to dispel some of the myths to help you sort out your camping power.

When setting up a solar power setup you need to know a few details about your own setup!

Firstly, are you connecting your solar to a stand-alone battery, or connecting it directly up to your vehicle. If you are connecting to your vehicle, is your vehicle fitted with a dual battery system, is this a simple voltage sensing relay, or is it a smart DC-DC charger like the CTEK D250SA.

The reason we need to know all of these things is so we have a better understanding of just how to connect our solar to our battery or batteries.

Solar panels cannot be connected directly to a battery, this is a sure fire way to over charge your battery and potentially destroy it, solar panels are designed to output the maximum possible voltage which makes them much more efficient in more dim conditions, such as where it may be overcast or even shadowy.

This is where our solar voltage controllers come in, an unregulated solar panel on a clear sunny day has the potential to put out up to a whopping 23V of DC power, this is almost double what a typical battery can accept, this means we need to lower this voltage down to a much more acceptable 14V which is in line with recharging any 12v battery system.

Current technology offers us 2 main ways to achieve this, the first is with a PWM Controller!

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)

Pulse width modulation or PWM solar regulation works by sensing your battery voltage requirements and then switching the voltage output on and off at regular intervals however varying the length of the “on” and “off” cycles, to ensure the most effective charge is put into the battery.

A PWM regulator is easily the most cost-effective way for converting a solar panels output into a usable voltage for your 12v system and comes included with most of the Adventure Kings Solar Panel range, generally speaking you wont get better bang for buck!

All Adventure Kings PWM regulators feature a load output which means your solar controller will automatically isolate your critical accessories from your battery protecting from low voltage, over current, and will automatically divert any excess charge from the solar output to the accessory that is connected ensuring the PWM maximizes the charging potential for your setup!

Maximum Power Point Tracking (M.P.P.T.)

Because of the “on/off” nature of PWM voltage regulation, there is inefficiencies in the system, this is where MPPT comes in to its own!

An MPPT solar regulator will extract the maximum available power from a solar panel by adjusting itself using algorithms to constantly output at optimum voltage for the battery.  The MPPT systems monitor both the battery voltage and the input voltage coming straight from the solar panel, ensuring the optimum DC power is maintained for optimum charge.

Because of the ability to extract maximum power from the solar output – the MPPT Controllers are perfect for overcast situations, many DC-DC chargers use MPPT technology to maintain optimum battery health in both batteries in the system.


DOUBLE REGULATION – don’t do it!  

When you are setting up your solar panel setup, it can be extremely tempting to open up the box and then plug your solar panel straight into your crank battery or your auxiliary battery in your 4WD Dual battery setup, however if you are running a DC-DC charger like the D250SA you will curse yourself for not giving this a second thought.

Because of all of the clever sensing circuitry in both the DC-DC charge setup as well as the solar regulator (either PWM or MPPT) you will confuse both of these systems and they will trick themselves into not providing any charge, which is not great news if you were relying on your solar panel to provide your fridge with enough volts to keep the beers icy cold!

Whenever possible, if you are running a DC-DC setup you should absolutely connect your solar directly to the “solar” input on the DC-DC to ensure you get the maximum amount of charge output into your system, this may require you to cut the wires between the factory PWM regulator and the solar output, but will give your camping setup the power it needs!