I'm building an off-grid solar system for full time nomadery. It'll need to move at least every two weeks or so. My partner and I will be setting our camp up out of a van and a Jeep Wrangler. The van can't make it into any especially unmaintained NFS/BLM roads, so I was hoping to transport the solar in or on top of the Jeep. I don't currently have a roof rack, so I'd be getting one just for this application. I was looking at some of the SanTan Solar panels, pretty great prices, but most of those suckers are pretty big. Never having set up a solar system before, I don't have a great grasp on how likely a roof-rack-mounted panel will hold up on a 4WD road with lots of bumps and vibrations. I've heard bigger panels can flex and crack pretty easily?
The other snag is that I'd like to end up drawing least 600-800 watts total, all of which is pretty unlikely to fit on the roof. This will be going into a DIY 24 volt 280Ah battery (with a charger controller of course). I'd do closer to a Kw array if I thought it was feasible, but I have a suspicion that's a lot of solar to make mobile regardless of whether it's in a vehicle or on top of one. So there's a fair chance the whole roof idea is garbage and I should just plan to carry my panels around in the vehicles.
So yeah, hoping some folks here can give me a rough idea of what kind of panels are best suited to a constantly-mobile application with rough roads being a somewhat regular occurrence. Seems like the most portable units are all super low wattage. Thanks in advance.
The other snag is that I'd like to end up drawing least 600-800 watts total, all of which is pretty unlikely to fit on the roof. This will be going into a DIY 24 volt 280Ah battery (with a charger controller of course). I'd do closer to a Kw array if I thought it was feasible, but I have a suspicion that's a lot of solar to make mobile regardless of whether it's in a vehicle or on top of one. So there's a fair chance the whole roof idea is garbage and I should just plan to carry my panels around in the vehicles.
So yeah, hoping some folks here can give me a rough idea of what kind of panels are best suited to a constantly-mobile application with rough roads being a somewhat regular occurrence. Seems like the most portable units are all super low wattage. Thanks in advance.