Anywhere Under The Sun: Building Your Own Solar Tracker

By D. Weaver

There is a growing interest among Baby-boomers and even Millennials to live full-time on the road in an RV. Some of them want to experience off-grid camping in national parks using solar power. Although it is possible to harvest the Sun’s energy to produce clean power, it comes at some expense and you must be willing to compromise. The number of solar panels, storage capacity of the batteries, increased towing weight, positioning of the solar panels, damage caused from improper installation and proper sizing of the system are but a few issues to consider.

This ebook is intended for those individuals looking to use solar power for their RV. This ebook should not be your sole source of reference in your decision to use solar but it should inspire you to fully research the subject before you randomly install solar panels on the roof of an RV.

If you decide to use solar power for your RV and are reluctant to install fixed solar panels on the roof, you may find this ebook to be more than helpful. If you are interested in solar tracking you will find this ebook to be invaluable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. Weaver
• Release date: Apr 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463370452

D. Weaver

I retired from the Coast Guard 22 years ago. Most of my days are spent tinkering and building wild devices, mostly for my grand-daughters. The one project that I enjoyed making the most was a portable roller coaster for the yard. On one occasion we laid 300' of PVC track on a gentle sloping lawn that they assembled in about 10 minutes. For the last 7 years I have been designing and building portable and semi-portable solar trackers. I took an interest in solar when we moved out into the country with a nice big yard and a Barn with no power. One thing led to another and I eventually ran the Barn on solar and partially heated it with a passive solar furnace. I realized early on that I did not want to spend my retirement building and selling portable solar trackers in kit form but it was clear that there was an interest in portable solar. Writing an ebook describing the components and their purpose seemed to be a step in the right direction. This ebook will help you decide for yourself if you want to experiment with solar and my FREE downloadable plans will help you build one.

Book preview

Anywhere Under The Sun

Building Your Own Solar Tracker

Copyright 2019 D. Weaver

Published by D. Weaver at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Portable vs. Stationary

3. Solar Needs vs. Solar Wants

4. System Improvements

5. Solar Tracker Anatomy

6. Portable Solar Trackers

7. Build Your Own

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

As we set out on the road in our shiny camper (RV), with more than we normally use at home, we give very little thought on how we are going to power some of these devices because we know that we will be parking on a padded lot with 50 amps of power, running water, cable TV and tremendously inadequate for streaming Wifi.

There is actually a term that describes this style of camping where we surround