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Does Pollen & Dust Affect Solar Panels?

birder526

birder526

Novice
We have Renogy 100 watt solar panels and are on our 6th day camping in a sunny clearing. We have the Camp-Inn installed 12v solar connection. The sun feeds our 12v AGM battery. We've noticed that our refrigerator has stopped working. Our on board solar controller reads "yellow". It doesn't show the voltage. We have had full sun for the 6 days and heavy accumulations of pollen and dust have collected on the panels. We have now cleaned off the panels today and we suspect that the efficiency of the panels will improve. We think the pollen and dust have affected the productivity. What are your experiences? Please weigh in. Thanks.
 
If you have a dometic frig. it senses when your battery drop below a determined level and will shut down to prevent you from running your battery completely down. The dometic has a hi-med-low level that you can change. Sometimes when we have had low sunlight our battery did get low shutting the frig. down at like 12.5, which is mid battery level. When the battery charged up the fridge would kick back on...so I changed the fridge level to low. We havent had any issues with dust a least yet....R
 
I doubt the dust/pollen is the issue, though there is no harm in cleaning off the panel. I am guessing that the issue is the fridge setting. I've also found that it's not great to be charging multiple devices while also charging the battery. For example, having your laptop charging while the AGM battery is charging may impair the charging. Perhaps someone can advise about that.

But there also isn't as much sun in March as we think there is.

You say that you are using the Camp-Inn solar connection, but are you also using the Camp-Inn controller? If so, does your panel also have a controller? The charging doesn't work very well (at all?) if you have two controllers, and you need to bypass one of them.

-Al
 
Hi Al,
Thanks for your response! We just use the CI controller, not the Renogy. Typically we only charge our phone in the teardrop when we're boondocking. And more frequently we will charge the phone in our car using a 100w inverter, along with our iPad and laptop. It looks like the Dometic is shutting down as Ron explained.
 
Ron,
Thanks for your response! We think that you are right on with your Dometic explanation. Michael has set us at 11.9 volts. So, we better understand what's going on!
 
Diane_Michael said:
Hi Al,
Thanks for your response! We just use the CI controller, not the Renogy. Typically we only charge our phone in the teardrop when we're boondocking. And more frequently we will charge the phone in our car using a 100w inverter, along with our iPad and laptop. It looks like the Dometic is shutting down as Ron explained.
Click to expand...

Great! Am hoping it's just a simple matter of switching the Dometic switch.

I don't think I've ever had a problem when charging my cell phone while the TD was charging on solar, but I do think I've had a problem when charging the battery that powers my CPAP machine, which is more along the lines of a laptop battery, I'd say. And I do seem to remember someone saying that the TD/AGM battery will not charge as well if there are multiple batteries being charged.

-Al
 
Also, as an additional FYI as I'm going through the same thing but on a little different level, but the idea is the same..

Solar charges more in the Am hours than in the pm hours.
If put on a slant towards the sun, it can gain apx 30% more.

FYI:
I have 2 160W panels, total 320w and had 2 12v grp 29 water batteries which I just swapped out for 2 6v batteries which have a longer retention/drawing power.

I will eventually get another 160w panel and another set of 2 6v batteries and then I should be Generator free except with AC and Microwave.. heheh, yah, getting old sucks, but it sure comes in handy... also for the Jacuzzi water pumps.. heheh and blenders... (joking, no jacuzzi.... not yet anyway, but I did seem them for RVs at a show)

I've often wondered on the cleaning of the panels too, but no one seems to think it's a concern, maybe takes in different light waves unaffected by dust etc... dunno...


fun in the sun, solar is...
 
Thanks, Joan! We did see this article, plus a few others. The consensus seems to be that cleaning the panels definitely helps with efficiency.
 
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