Does anyone charge their boat batteries with a solar panel set up? Does it work good enough for the investment and how much did yours cost? I go camping in remote areas with no electricity to recharge my troller batteries. I was thinking of adding a solar panel somewhere on the boat to help keep them charged up.

There is a lengthy discussion on this here somewhere but it has been a while, so it is pretty well buried. The solar panels are OK for keeping a maintainence charge on batteries but it takes an impractical number of panels to recharge batteries discharged by a day's fishing. For example the largest solar panel in the Cabela's catalog has an output of 1.25A. If your trolling motor draws 5Amps you would have to charge for 4 hours for every hour you ran the motor. And remember-they don't work at night! Tom

A friend of mine tried one, don't waste your money. It took days to charge the battery with one.

I use the largest one Harbor Freight sells. It keeps my batteries fully charged at all times. Of course, I use a regular charger to recharge after a fishing trip, then I just keep them hooked up to the solar panels until the next fishing trip. Then I don't have to charge them before the trip because the solar panels have them fully charged. That solar panel is permanently mounted where you see it in the photo.

Try this link: http://www.stayncharge.com/products.php?cat=7 You can use your vehicle to charge the boat batteries and also if the boat motor is big enough, it can charge all the batteries while you travel from spot to spot.
Gary

Running that 6.3 liter Tahoe to charge your boat batteries is an awfully expensive way of doing it unless you are charging while moving from lake to lake and outboards rarely have enough alternator output to charge a bank of trolling batteries in the time you are running it. Some form of charger be it an external unit or one of the built in units is almost a necessity. Tom

I use 2 solar panels (harbor freight). They are on the boat while I am not. By time I get to boat,which is on weekends,batteries are charged.Quick charge,I use my portable charger. Solar panels deliver a trickle charge. But you also have to install a shunt circuit,so you don't overcharge battery or your boat motor's charging system does not burn solar panel circuit. 2 panels and shunt: $50.00