Anybody running solar panels on their Hood

If you are what all are you powering with them?

 

You don’t power things with solar, you power things with a battery and you use solar to charge the battery. Solar output is small and constantly varying, you wouldn’t get the amperage needed to actually power anything useful.

 

I understand I worded the question poorly.

 

You didnt really. But hood panels are still more niche than most use, still keeping to a roof mounted or loose (on the ground) version. Cascadia and Lensun are two of the most prominent names who specifically design the panel for hood shapes, but keep in mind none of them have panels above 100w. May or may not be an issue but factor that in to your power calcs. To Agent's point though, youre unlikely to power something directly from the panel, so panel > charge controller > battery bank > distribution block is an option for powering your offroad lights, fridge, air compressor, winch, whatever else it is you bring on the road.

 

I got the foldable 100W and just aim it towards the sun. Works fine to trickle charge my house battery for the the fridge, rtt lights, etc... I plan to upgrade to the 200W version down the road.

 

I used to think about mounting solar on the vehicle all the time for various applications. Not worth it for any application.

For one it would look terrible. Two, something you could mount to the hood wouldn't get much wattage.

Solar requires a large area is the problem. Best bet as stated already is a folding pannel you stand up during the day to get 120-200 watts to charge your battery which is constantly powering your fridge.

And then while driving your cigarette lighter or AC outlet.

I just ordered the 120watt folding bluetti and 720 power bank but just to charge laptops, hand held radios at night, lights at night, electric kettle, drone and camera battery charging. No fridge for now.

For this, just charging the battery while driving would be fine but we plan to spend some days camping and not driving. Those days the solar will charge the battery.

Solar mounted on the vehicle sounds cool and I've tried to make it work in my head but it's just not practical. You can't angle them to get proper light to it will be less efficient. It will be small and low wattage. maybe you can't park your rig anywhere but in the shade. It's a cool concept but in practice not so much.

 

Interesting idea but seems impractical in application.

 

https://trail4runner.com/2022/05/18/lensun-100w-hood-solar-panel-5th-gen-4runner/

 

Nah