c21fishing
12-02-2009, 08:47 PM
Has anyone used portable solar panels on there boat to charge a trolling motor battery. if i cant do this can i charge the trolling motor battery and starting battery at the same time through the outboard while it is running
You need a fairly large solar panel to charge a trolling motor sized batteries. One of the 1'x4' variety is about the minimum and would take several days to charge it up. If your goals is to fish continually, it would probably take 3-4 of these panels.
Minnkota has an alternator charger that will charge your trolling motor batteries off your outboard's alternator can put out enough juice (most 75hp+ motors can). They only charge at 10-amps per battery, but my experience has been that I can pretty much fish all week long as long as I'm running the outboard 1-2hours per day. The batteries never get fully charged, but they never drop below 50% either.
Another alternative I've seen is to use a 1000W+ portable generator and a cart-style 60-amp charger to charge the batteries up in an hour or so. The only problem with this is that only the expensive optima-type spiral batteries can withstand such abuse.