Quote Originally Posted by Crappie Reaper View Post
?? Can you restate this so that it makes sense to a simple fella like me?Do you mean a $500-$800 for a solar charger that still won't do what is expected of it?
To recharge a battery like a TM battery after it's been used, you need at least 3-5 amps to overcome the battery's internal resistance.

At 14.5V, which is the charging voltage for a battery, 3-5 amps is 43.5 to 72.5W. You could probably deal with 50W, but your battery will suffer in terms of longevity because of the low recharge rate, which means the battery stays in a discharged state for a long time.

50W panels run around $300 for cheap ones, to well over $500 for good ones. These things run at around 23V naturally, so you need to use some type of charge controller. That's another $50-$100 minimum.

After you have the money tied up, you end up with a very delicate 2ft by 3ft piece of expensive glass that only works on sunny days, and never works as well as a much cheaper electric charger. I can't even keep from breaking my sunglasses in the boat :o

A small generator with an onboard charger will recharge the batteries much faster, in any kind of weather, day or night (a big deal if you want to fish two days in a row), and the cost is in about the same range.

The panels are better than nothing, but almost every option, including hauling the batteries home to charge, is cheaper and better for the batteries.

The little fence charger panels are usually worse than nothing at all. They can bleed charge out of the battery, and even in full sunlight they only put out 600 to 800 milliamps, which means even ignoring battery self discharge, they would take around 200 hours of direct sunlight to recharge a battery. They can't even keep a fence charger battery charged, and they are about a tenth the size of a boat battery.