Staying In Charge—Part III, Solar Power

Solar panels perform best when they can track the sun

There are very few cruising boats that we see these days that don’t have a solar panel fitted somewhere, and many have some pretty substantial arrays. Our experience over the last five years has been largely positive, and we’re convinced that solar has played a valuable part in our supplementary power installation, wherever we have sailed, from the far north of Scotland to the Canaries. And with prices for larger panels now falling below $1/W, solar panels are becoming a more affordable option.