[Hodgy]

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Before Christmas I bought a 40 watt portable solar panel that was on sale. Now that the snow has mostly melted around here I am playing with things on the TT.

Over the last few days I have had the solar panel hooked up to the battery to see how much I can get out of it. If it is just sitting in the ambient light when the sun is up, the voltmeter is reading at 13.1 volts. If I have it sitting in direct sunlight the voltmeter is reading 14.2 volts.

I thought that was pretty good for a small panel. Now there is no real draw coming from the TT so it is keeping the battery up.

I am going to light up the furnace and run it overnight and see if the battery will last. I know the furnace is a hog for power. I have a propane Buddy Heater that I plan to use rather than the furnace, when we require a bit of heat. What I noticed last winter when I was running the furnace is that the trailer holds the heat real well and the furnace was not cycling very much even in -15 F weather.

We are planning to go out to one of our local campgrounds next week to do a shakedown run on the trailer. I have switched all of the lights to LED so hopefully we can survive on the 40 watt panel. If not, will go to plan B, whatever that turns out to be.

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