We added 440 watts of solar panels to the pilothouse roof. When the sun is showing the panels charge the house batteries and keep the house batteries topped off so the house bank is full charged when we are ready for an outing.

Below is one of the 4 solar panels in the packaging as it arrived and after it is unboxed.

• 

• 

It took some work to run the solar panels from the pilothouse roof to house battery bank under the cockpit floor.

Based on the weather so far, I haven’t seen the full 440 watt output, but I have seen 330 watt and above. We are looking forward to some sunny weather. Here is view of the MPPT controller bluetooth connected application.

The MPPT controller that we used is the MPPT 150 | 35 SmartSolar charge controller from Victron Energy. What the MPPT does is it takes the power coming from the solar panels at greater than 12 volts and reduces it to the 12v to 14v range for charging the batteries. It also monitors and turns off the charging when the batteries are full to prevent over charging.

After seeing how well the 4 x 110 watt panels worked, I ordered 4 more that we will attempt to install to the canvas roof of the fly bridge.