Anyone running a second battery on a solar panel for camping?

Just curious. I was at Harbor Freight today and saw their $45 3 square foot 12v battery charging solar panels.

I was wondering if anyone ever mounted one of these to their roofs under their racks and ran it to a spare battery in a box also mounted on the roof.

I do a fair amount of camping and thought that having the panels hooked up to the battery all day while wheeling and then hooking the battery up to the jeep at night for AC or the radio would be a good idea. Pretty cheap too.

$45 for the panel
$9 for the Sealed Marine Battery box from autozone
$10 for random wires and such
$25 for a battery from the Deka battery plant down the street.

$90 for electric at night camping.

Am I just going too far here? Or am I onto something?

Thanks guys.

I have a pop up camper and thats what I did. I charge an auto batt during the day and have lights and a fan at night, works pretty good. I dont usually camp near electric or in pay sites so helped save on batteries for flashlights and lanterns.

Hi. I had a similar need, we had a problem here where some clowns were trying to get their road turned into a dead end because too many people were driving down it (go figure) so I turned my XJ into a billboard with internet access and parked it there. I was running a laptop pc, 802.11b radio and webcam (publishing live feed to the web meant nobody would hurt my precious) all on a second battery recharged by solar power.

Anyway the big $$$ rollup panels are probably where the future in portable/personal solar power is going, but that sounds like a good deal, if nothing else a great starter package to get you hooked on making your own power while camping. You have to be very careful with those panels they are brittle. Also get yourself an MPPT charge controller, it will make a big difference charging your battery, sometimes those panels are gimmicks, you have to be sure that the output of the panel will be enough to recharge your battery for with the available light.

PS The panel here is USCG surplus from a bouy, very durable. And we won, they didn't get to close the road, and XJ ended up on the news. Too bad when I pulled the the stickers off some paint came with!

^lol badass.

Now im doing it for sure.

^^^^ Now that is some funny shit.