Installing Solar on the truck...

[Waterloo]

You can run anything, wet, gel, AGM or lithium if you have the correct controller. They, the wizards of solar, recommend 100 Amp Hour batteries or greater to run a house or shed, where you are running actual appliances and what not off of the batteries and an inverter.

Me, I have the 75ah Duracells, along with an 100ah+ AGM. The controller I purchased can charge both simultaneously, so not concerned there. What I want to do is maintain the batteries and occasionally run a light load, mainly on 12v. Not operate everything on the truck, like AC and appliances and keep the APU usage to a minimum.

My plan is to tend the batteries and cut down on fuel consumption, which is very doable with this set up if everything I have read is true. There are more than a few videos out there on trucking companies putting these panels on their fleet trucks to save money. And from what I have seen, it is working in regards to financial savings, which is my goal.

The Thermo King units use a 50w solar panel and a very simple $3 controller to maintain batteries. That is doable too, I would say for around $200, if you just want to keep the battery bank fresh and not run anything in the truck, other than say charge a phone or laptop.

I'll let you know how it goes, as it will probably be a week or two until I can get to the install.