Adding solar on my 1999 406

[pwillis@mail.com]

Hello all!! I hope everyone had a great holiday and Happy New Year. Has anyone mounted solar panels to their aft deck roof? Can you share what you did and how you did it? Panels and sizes, getting wires to the battery charger, controllers, battery types, sizes and manufacturers. Anything you can share even YouTube videos would be helpful. I'm hoping to make this my 2024 project this year!! As always, thank you for your help and comments.

[Viper]

There are at least a couple of member installation threads on here. I'm sure someone will post links to the threads but you could also try doing a search here on the topic in the search field above.

[MyPleasure]

Hi, we have a 1992 3608, which is basically the same boat as your 406, but without the big swim platform. I have 2 190 watt go power panels on the hardtop, and another 190 watt panel on the bridge canvas. I get about 25 amps out of the panels on a good day. But they do get my 6-6volt house batteries to float stage quite quickly. I ran the 10 gauge wire down to the engine room following the bridge control wiring down the starboard aft side of the bridge where the radar arch meets the bridge. Had to drill a hole to access the wiring route, but you can’t really see it unless it’s pointed out to someone. The wires then go to my 30 amp controller and then down to the batteries with a fuse on the positive side.
I attached the panels on the hardtop using Alien tape and earth magnets so that I didn’t have to drill holes in the hardtop, and attached the panel to the bridge canvas with the earth magnets too. they worked perfectly over the last 2 summers, and never had a panel move in some good winds.
It’s definitely a lot of work to install everything properly, but well worth it if you anchor out a lot like we do.

[Charmsonym]

I did something similar last summer—mounted a few panels on my aft deck and ran the wiring to a Victron controller. Ended up using 100Ah AGM batteries and it’s been working fine so far. For parts, I got most of my gear from raylyst, a leading distributor of photovoltaic products for the European market, and they had everything I needed.