Well, kinda. It didn't occur to me to take photos of it while I was setting it all up, but I'm attaching one where you can kinda see the solar panel on the forward part of the bimini if you zoom way in. The setup was pretty simple. The solar panel has grommets in all four corners so I used short bungee cords to secure it to the support poles of the bimini. I made a custom 10 gauge cable that runs from the panel, down the forward/ starboard side of the bimini pole and plugs into a watertite plug mounted in the starboard cockpit seat back. From there I ran another 10 gauge set of wires through the bilge and up into the battery box which sits amid ships in front of the v-berth.

To store the solar panel I made a mesh hammock in the v-berth. The solar panel slides into it and is out of the way until it's needed. It takes less than 5 minutes to strap to the bimini and plug in.

We were planning to be at sea and anchored for 10 days. Between the lights, water pump, phones, ipad, and nav equipment I was worried the solar wouldn't be able to keep up. I was pretty happy when the solar controller went from bulk charge to float by noon each day. The MPPT controller is so much more efficient than the PWM. I did find the panel worked better on the back part of the bimini so the sail wouldn't shade it as much. Peter's set up on the arch is much better.

I just looked it up and the panel is 110 watts not 125 like I had originally posted. The one I purchased is made by Sunpower and has the Maxeon cells.

Michael Riter
SV EmmaB




EmmaB Keys 2019.jpg

On Tue, Jun 8, 2021 at 9:02 PM S/V Lark <Colealexander at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I hadn’t realized how far flexible cells had come.     Do you have pictures
> of your Bimini mount?
>
> Alex
>
>
>
> -----
> Alex Cole
> S/V Lark
> --
> Sent from: http://rhodes-22.1065344.n5.nabble.com/
>