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Mounting 2 / 90 watt PV panels cheaply?

Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 7:19 am
by Dennis The Bus Dweller
Hi gang

Have any of you guy or gals come up with an inexpensive way to mount a
couple of solar panels on a skoolie roof and be able to hinge them up
when parked and fasten them down really good when it`s time to go down
the road. When I do my own setup's I don't usually think about the
cost of it ( that's probably why im either flush with cash or broke )
but I got a buddy building a short skoolie on a tight budget. He's got
2 / 90 watt panels that he want's to mount up there. Any bright ideas
and or pic's would be appreciated.

Peace along the way
Dennis the bus dweller N.Y.

Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 3:52 am
by Sharkey
Some years back Home Power magazine had an article about a PV installation on Don Lowberg's VW bus. I think it included four 75 watt panels and had a tip-up mount that could elevate either to the right or left on the van, depending on which side you pulled the retaining pins on.

Cheap? Easy? Have you priced aluminum these days?

Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2009 3:06 am
by AccordGuy
Maybe not quite what you were after but I've just built a fixed tilt ground array mount from wood and aluminium that was cheaper than buying mounts but still far from cheap. I mounted two 170W panels of 130x99cm size and it cost about $185 ($156 of that being the aluminium extrusions) in parts from the hardware store plus about 3 days of my time. You can see a description and some pix on my blog thread here:

http://www.mrsharkey.com/forum/vwtp.php?p=2833#2833

But these days it might be worth looking at the new flexible stick-on solar films for the roof rather than traditional glass framed panels. They are quite expensive but you can make the most use of the roof space without having any mounting kit and they aren't fragile.

Posted: Sun May 30, 2010 3:12 am
by bavo76
i brought my panels off eBay and there the portable type with a stand already attached so what i did was i brought a length of alloy flat and a( c) section piece of alloy and pop riveted these at the top and bottom of my panels to make them flat and solid and then at one end i pop riveted a pair of good quality hinges to the top of my bus .with a simple slide bolt to hold them down while traveling and then if need be i can stand them up with the original stand towards the sun or just leave them flat .i hope this helps and i will try to get a photo of this soon