Hello and welcome to the Narrowboat Experience. I'm Kath and I've recently installed these two
awesome life-changing solar panels on the roof of our 57-foot narrowboat home.
I found it quite hard to find out all the information I needed when looking online
to plan out this installation so i wanted to put together a video to share with you
five really important things that you need to think about
if you're going to plan your own awesome solar install on your narrow boat
the first thing that you need to think about is power usage why is that important i hear you
say because obviously if you're installing solar you're doing it because you want to
keep your batteries topped up and how do you know how much solar you need if you don't know how much
power you use it's very important that you size your solar installation correctly to suit your
needs it's very easy to go and look and go this person's got these panels and i'm just gonna go
and replicate that i want what he's got but what if you use more power than that guy then you're
just going to be permanently cross that your solar panel installation doesn't meet your requirements
talking about power and narrowboats you'll typically hear three terms amps volts and watts
that's because the batteries have an amp hour rating and a voltage rating which relates to
the flow of the electricity from the battery and the force that that power will come out in
Then you're looking at solar panels and them being rated in watts. Watts is the amount of energy that
you need and you calculate that by taking your amps and multiplying it by your volts so if you
have 100 amp hour battery and you multiply that by by 12 for the number of watts you will get the
wattage that you need to put all of that power back in the battery which is 1200 watts so with
that simple equation you can look at any electrical device on your narrow boat
it'll probably have a little sticker on the back that will give you either a watts or an amp
rating and you can calculate the power draw of that item add them all together work out
how many hours you have them running there's some great videos about that already do your research
calculate how much you use we have a battery monitor installed on our narrowboat and we
had one on our old narrow boat as well and that shows you quite simply if you've got no
power going in or out you turn something on it'll tell you exactly what that device uses
it's been really helpful for us to use to work out our power usage we use typically
between 80 and 100 amps a day so that's with us working full-time from our narrowboat
running two laptops charging cameras keeping the fridge going and that kind of incidental
power usage from lights and showers and and so on some people will use more than that
and others will use less if they're not working from their narrowboat for example
the second thing that you need to think about is what panels are you going to install there's
the choice between having flexible panels and rigid panels and there's so many different items
available on the market and that's why it gets so easy to just look at another boat and say
i want them flexible panels are really great if you're worried about the aesthetic of your boat or
if you want to be able to walk on the roof once they're stuck on securely you can walk across them
whereas obviously with the rigid panels they're so they're big they take up a little bit more
roof space in some cases and you definitely shouldn't try walking across them of course
rigid panels have other benefits which include the airflow around them because generally
because they're not glued onto your narrow boat directly there is airflow which keeps them cooler
and while solar panels love sun they don't like to be hot so that airflow around them is really
good for improving performance the second thing once you've chosen whether you want
flexi or rigid panels is to look at the size now the size is the physical size and where they're
going to go on your roof and also the output size and the power rating that each panel has
so you want to kind of maximize the number of watts for the space that you've got and how
you use your boat it's very important to note that the wattage value assigned to a panel is best case
so in optimum conditions with perfect sun then 100 watt panel will give you 100 watts
on a narrowboat in the uk with the sketchy weather and all the trees along the canal your chances of
getting that peak performance from your panel is not that great so you're kind of looking at
getting 70 to 80 of the maximum capacity in in optimum summer months so bear that in mind when
you're working out from your power usage how many what panels you need when i was deciding
what additional solar panels to put on our narrowboat i decided to keep the flexi panel in
the middle of the boat which you'll have seen if you've watched our cruising videos and that means
that we can still get onto the roof of the boat at the stern and walk up to the point where the
center line rope is and that gives us the option of getting on the roof in locks and that's great
that left the bow area of the boat available for panels we haven't walked down there a huge amount
in the year or so that we've lived on this boat so i thought i'll just fill that space with
panels and i picked two 355 watt lg panels there is space for a third panel on our roof i think
but i've decided that we would just have the two for the time being because i think that having
that third panel is overkill because the majority of the time during the summer months those two
panels that we've put plus the flexi panel should be more than enough to meet our power requirements
the third thing that you need to think about when you're planning out your solar install is
how you're going to attach your solar panels to the roof of your narrow boat if you've
decided to have flexi panels then it's really simple get your glue stick them on done if
you've decided to go for rigid solar panels then you have three main options to pick from
the first one is using some kind of brackets to attach the solar panels flat on your roof the
second one is to go for the triangular brackets that give you a little amount of tilt for your
panel or the third option is to go for a different type of bracket that has a larger tilt when i was
trying to decide what type of brackets to use to attach our solar panels i referenced a few of the
other narrowboat vloggers i looked at minimalists video on the full tilt i saw a really great video
from never enough cruising where they've got a specific bracket that you can get from one of the
solar providers that gives you a few different options for tilting and they're great with the
slimline solar panels and i watched david from cruising the cuts video about winter solar
which was really helpful in sizing the panels to make sure that we get enough power and watts
in during winter when the sunshine hours are slightly less i decided to go for
brackets that give us a full tilt option the brackets that i've chosen are the exact width
of our solar panels and they're appropriately rated for the size of panel and we've got options
to tilt them at different levels depending on the time of year so we get maximum flexibility from it
after i'd selected the brackets i obviously needed to work out a way to attach them to the roof
because the roof of the narrowboat is curved and the brackets are not for this i found some feet
available from one of the solar companies which i'll link to in the description i
thought that they were a little bit expensive and did some additional research and found a product
that i think is comparable and has definitely done the job well on our narrowboat roof
the fourth thing to think about when planning your solar install is how everything's going to be
connected together and for that i mean connecting the solar panels to a charge controller and then
to your batteries to harness that power the most important piece of equipment in that scenario
is going to be your charge controller there's again lots of different brands and and different
sizing available to work out what you need check the specifications for the solar panels
that you've picked and they'll give you a maximum voltage output and a maximum amp output so if you
add those numbers together then you can get the rating appropriate for your charge controller for
example with our installation the maximum volts that our panels combined will output is something
in the region of 80 to 90 volts so i bought a 100 volt charge controller that the puts out a maximum
of 50 amps when it comes to the pv cables that run from your solar panel to your charge controller
the majority of cables that i've seen available seem to be either four millimeter thickness or six
millimeter thickness if your panels are going to be really close to the charge controller then you
can just go with the four millimeter cable for us we went with the six millimeter cable because our
cable run is about 10 meters long the other thing to think about is whether you're going to connect
your solar panels in series or in parallel there's lots of great videos talking about the differences
i'll link in the description to a video that the gone with the wynns have done where they've done
comparisons and they show you what happens when you shade parts of the panel and the differences
that that has to the output and also a video from a channel called rv with tito where he talks about
what those connections look like physically so he actually shows you the different connectors
that you will need to buy if you're going to go for a series connection or a parallel connection
the last thing that you need to think about is what tools you're going to need you don't want
to be up on your roof in the wind and discover that you've forgotten the most critical tool
that's going to help you attach those panels to your roof you will likely need some or all of the
following tools if you're going to be drilling into the roof of your steel narrow boat then
obviously you need to make sure that you've got an appropriate steel cutting drill bit
that's the right size for the hole that you're going to drill and also a tap and die set to cut
the thread for the bolt that you're going to use to attach the panel we also have used oil when we
were doing the drilling and when we were attaching the screws we put a little bit of butyl tape
around to make the connection watertight when it comes to running the cables if your narrow
boat is already fully kitted out then you might need a fish tape which is great for hooking and
pulling the cable through without having to take this the interior sealing down i also purchased
stainless steel washers and nyloc nuts for attaching the solar panels to the rails
and lastly we used a lot of sikaflex to glue down those flexible feet
thanks for joining me today to learn all about solar
i hope you've enjoyed it and found it useful if you're planning your own installation
if there's anything you think i've missed in this video then please do let me know in the comments
or if you've got any questions about anything that we've talked about today put that in the
comments as well make sure you're subscribed so that you don't miss out on my next two really
exciting solar videos one of which you'll see us install these panels spoiler alert it was a
very windy day and in the third video we'll talk about how these panels have actually
changed our lives and how efficient they've been not so much on a day like today when there's
big obstructions on the panels but you don't want to miss it if you're interested in solar and
narrowboat power usage so make sure you're subscribed and click that bell icon so that you
don't miss out and we'll see you again next time on the narrowboat experience thanks for watching