Solar!

I'm getting into the world of solar power. Allison and I have talked off an on about making our house a little more energy independent. Ideally we'd love to be able to live off the grid entirely but we aren't willing to pay somebody to do it for us. The problem is that we don't really know what we are doing. So I decided to get a single solar panel and aim to take a low use circuit in our house off of the grid. I'm also going to be collecting data on how much power we can reasonably expect to collect from our roof along with measuring how much power we actually need to run our house. After a year of data collection I hope to have enough experience and information to design a system that we can build to supply our own power. What does this have to do with the Vanagon you ask?

The nice thing about the panel I got is that it is the perfect size/weight/wattage to provide all of the energy that I would need to run a fridge/aux power in the van while on the road. My plan is to just snag the panel off of our roof whenever we've got a camping trip and take it with us. When I get home then I pop it back on the roof. That way I'm not spending $400 to sit a panel on the roof of the van that I will only use a handful of times annually but I'll still have it available when we are ready to roll. I'm not sure how exactly I want to mount the panel on the van but I'll either go with some sort of luggage rack mounting system like they have on the Vanagon For All Seasons site or I will just store it in the upper bunk while we are driving.

This is going to be really fun!

Oh and here is the panel I got