I've been considering solar too -- until just a few days ago, Costco
had a 60W kit for $300, which seemed quite a deal.  It's not on the
costco website any more, may still be in stock at local stores?   The
kit comes as four 15W panels, which is either a pro or con depending
on what you wanted to do with them.

By my calculations, 60W would be just enough to fully recharge your
average optima deep cycle battery on a sunny day in the southern USA,
so having 150W would be overkill -- 150W would only take about 3-4
hours of direct sun to deliver 450WH.

On Aug 15, 2006, at 3:47 AM, Dennis Haynes wrote:

> Bring a lot of money. Basically, you will need 150 watts and a charge
> controller. You are looking at spending ~$1,000 for this much power
> and that
> will only be available on sunny days. Then you need some good
> batteries to
> store that power to make it worthwhile. Why do you need that type
> of juice?
>
> Dennis
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On
> Behalf Of
> andy highland
> Sent: Monday, August 14, 2006 9:00 PM
> To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
> Subject: Any solar gurus out there?
>
> I'm hoping to acquire the components for a solar charging rig rather
> quickly and could use some help. I want to come up with a rig that
> will
> provide 10A at 14.3V.
>
> Thanks,
> -andy