The Installation of a Marine Solar Panel

When you decide to use a solar panel to help keep your boat's batteries charged, you will receive a certain amount of applause from those who think your environmentalism is laudable, and who do not have to help you install the panel. Accept their applause graciously and never tell them how you did it. The project is straightforward, requiring only that you have a basic knowledge of soldering wires together and managing a wrench.

• 1

  Unpack the solar panel kit. Loosen the nuts on the clamps and remove one of the two nuts and bolts that hold the halves of each of the clamps together. Set the solar panel mounting frame in the location where you wish to mount the panel, with the clamps wrapped around the component of the vessel to which you plan to clamp the solar panel.

• 2

  Insert the bolts you removed from the clamps back into the clamps and thread the nuts onto the bolts. Tighten the nuts with a wrench.

• 3

  Slide the solar panel into the mounting frame. Thread the screws provided through the mounting frame and into the mounting holes on the edges of the panel. Tighten the screws with a screwdriver.

• 4

  Use a pliers-type crimper to crimp a ring terminal for a 3/8-inch post to one end stranded copper wire of the same gauge as the solar panel's positive wire. Solder an inline fuse to the other end of the wire with a soldering iron and silver-bearing rosin core solder. Solder the other end of the inline fuse to one leg of a Schottky diode of the appropriate voltage and amp rating. Solder the remaining leg of the diode to the solar panel's red (positive) wire.

• 5

  Crimp a 5/16-inch ring terminal to the end of the black (negative) wire of the solar panel. Remove the 3/8-inch nut from the positive post of your battery, set the ring terminal of the red wire over the post and thread the nut back onto the post. Tighten the nut with a wrench.

• 6

  Remove the 5/16-inch nut from the negative post of your battery, set the ring terminal of the black wire over the post and thread the nut back onto the post. Tighten the nut with a wrench.