Solar Tops Most Wanted List of Marine Boat Supplies

Marine boat supplies continue to flow from the idea desks of marine electronics companies. And one of the driving forces is solar technology. Every day there are more marine boat supplies that come complete, and that means complete with an energy supply that lasts forever.

Today you can readily find solar flashlights, solar lanterns, solar storing cases and solar traveling bags and tomorrow you can expect to find more solar devices, like solar stereos, solar GPS units and solar laptops.

However, because most people don’t want to leave their expensive electronic devices in the sun, the trend in boating is for boat companies to offer solar cell panels as built in options.

Whether you are considering a solar option for your boat or just wondering what solar power has to offer, like a reliable power back-up, you will want to consider not only what marine electronics come in solar versions, but all the different types of solar panels and batteries.

Because today’s solar panels come in flexible, rigid and foldup versions, you will first have to decide on what type will fit your needs the best. For that decision you should take into consideration not only the solar panel’s power rating, size and weight, but also the batteries that come along with it.

Ideally, you want batteries that offer the highest ampere-hour rating and the lowest weight. For solar panels it’s the same. But since solar panels are most often rated in watts instead of ampere-hours, you would want a solar panel that has the highest watt to weight ratio.

As a general rule of thumb, for any consistent use of your electronics devices, the solar panel’s power rating should at least equal the power requirements of the electronic devices you plan to use. For example, if you plan to have a 300 watt microwave on board, you would want a solar panel that has at least a 300 watt power rating. Although you could use a 30 watt panel, the end result would be a microwave that you couldn’t use very much.

What you have to remember on your solar panel search is that the watt ratings don’t tell the whole story. And that’s because you store the energy from your solar panel in a battery. That means you can save the energy that your solar panel generates to run high-wattage devices.

Because of the ability to save solar power in batteries it is necessary to calculate the amount of power your solar panel generates over time. If you have a 30 watt solar cell and if its receiving full sun 60 hours per week, it will generate 1800 watt-hours of energy per week. Here you just simply multiply the number of sun hours, 60, by the watt rating of your solar panel, 30, to obtain 1800 watt-hours.

This means that within a week, you will have saved enough power to run a 10 watt appliance for 180 hours, or a 100 watt appliance for 18 hours or even a 1000 watt appliance for 1.8 hours.

As a point of reference consider the power rating of your electronic devices that you plan to use and the power rating of any marine electronics before you buy. Consider also that your typical cell phones and portable GPS units consume from 1 to 5 watts when you are communicating and next to nothing when they’re off. Laptops, PCs, chartplotters and accessories such as satellite terminals will often easily consume 20 watts and up.

However, don’t forget that the power consumption of a device depends on what it’s doing. When just working on your PC word processor, you are consuming much less power than when you’re on the Internet. And that’s because downloading and uploading large files is power intensive. Just how power intensive depends on which way the information is going. Transmitting information can often require 3 or 4 times the power required for receiving

If you’re thinking that you want to bring all the conveniences of home onboard, consider first that appliances like dryers, refrigerators and water makers are big consumers of power, often in the order of thousands of watts.

But there is still hope. More and more high efficiency appliances are entering the market. The Spectra Watermachine, for example, from Spectra Watermakers, requires only 13 watt-hours per gallon. And that according to the company is “just 33% of the energy required by the best competitive technology.”