Paul Arden | Thursday, 27 April 2017
I've had a reasonably long and varied history with solar panels because it's the obvious means of charging up when you are living outdoors. There is nothing worse, for example, than catching a large fish and having nothing to record the event with. Well, not much in my world anyway! Also one of the really big issues for me is my headlamp; without a charged headlamp I can do nothing after dark. So being powered up on the go is a really important issue for me.
Some years ago you might recall, in a fit of madness, I cycled half way around Australia. For that trip I had a solar panel attached to the trunk bag on the back of the bike and I used this to charge up my headlamp, phone and camera batteries. For the past five years however I've been spending most of my time living in the North Malaysian jungle and for the last two living on a small boat. My biggest problem here is the Thruster battery, which is essential for the fishing I'm doing. No thruster power = no fish.
It's actually on my boat that I've killed two solar panels. The first being a small one used for charging the phone and AA and AAA batteries, which died in a rainstorm and the other being a large suitcase type panel which I broke in a fit of excitement when I stepped on it while chasing some Snakehead.
At the beginning of this trip I started looking around for something that would solve my problems. The thruster alone drains a 50Ah battery in two days and I don't want to be recharging my battery every second night, not least because it can involve an 50 mile round trip just to do so.
So I had a look around and discovered a US company who manufacture durable, flexible, rollable, waterproof solar panels - i.e. Powerfilm Solar - and started a conversation. "Can I stand on your panel?" "Can it get wet?" "How big a panel do I need?" and so on. The result of this conversation has been that they've made me a "case study!"
I'm going to be honest with you and tell you that this panel has changed my jungle fishing life. They sent me one of their largest panels which is 60W. At first I tried rolling it out on the boat, but with all the clutter in the boat it wasn't working too well, despite making a handy unhooking mat! So I did what anyone else would do in my situation and turned it into a roof.
Naturally the A-frame shape is going to reduce the maximum wattage to a currently unknown value, perhaps 50W, but apart from buying a bigger boat it was the best idea I could come up with at the time. The roof turns out to be pretty handy too in fact because when it's hot, or raining, or both, Ashly (my girlfriend) can sit under it - which is most of the time.
There is something else about having a solar panel that really appeals to me... I'm "off-grid", or if not off-grid exactly, then at least less grid-dependent. I can now go fishing for week, have a fully charged thruster, run a sounder, charge my laptop, phone, camera and headlamp batteries and never worry about running out of power at times when I need it most. And I don't have to plug into the mains to do it.
The panel itself is really excellent, it really is durable, in the months that I've had it, I've walked on it, I've sat on it, unhooked (very large) fish on it, rolled it up, rolled it out (again and again and again), it's been wet... the only thing I haven't done is shoot it. The reason I mention the last part is because shooting panels is a surprising part of their testing procedure - after all it's made in America (it really is made in America by the way).
Consequently they are not the cheapest panels going; true quality never comes cheap. It is actually on a par with my solar panel on the roof of my Hungarian Shack, both in price and size. So if you are looking for the best panel, one that will extend your fishing trips into the backcountry, or even just reduce your dependency from "the grid" while outdoors, in nature, where the sun lives too, then I can thoroughly recommend that you look to Powerfilm Solar for your energy needs. They are very easy to talk to and will help you.
Their website is: powerfilmsolar.com but they have a handy page for fishermen here.
I have the 60W panel, a Voltage regulator (that they supplied) and a couple of deep cycle batteries on the boat.
Cheers, Paul