Portable Folding Solar Panels – Getting Off The Ground

Here are a few easy hack ideas for getting portable folding solar panels off the ground, while camping.

Even a very short ground cover will inhibit panels

If you live in the dessert, you can skip to some other article. There’s a lot of open area in a dessert without green ground cover. In fact, most of the portable solar panel review videos I see, seem to happen on dessert ground somewhere in America’s South-West. I’ve also seen reviewers on wooden decks, concrete patio’s or bare earth camping sites.

I don’t personally camp on a dessert floor, deck, patio, or highly trafficked bare ground sites – and so, its quickly obvious setting portable solar panels on the

Any shadowing on a solar cell limits panel output

Vacuume suction on glass

Magnetic for metal

ground anywhere green exists - won’t work well. The reason being, “the shadow effect”. It only takes the shade of a single small sliver of grass on a portable solar panel to seriously reduce its output. And we all want to squeeze as much out of the sun as possible.

Getting off the ground with solar in this case, doesn’t involve any science – but it does need to be secure enough from a stiff gust of wind. It also needs to keep the panels straight to avoid stressing them, especially if grommets on the panels are

being used to mount them. Any panel bending could lead to delamination of their thin layers over time.

I’ve found success mounting the panels directly onto a vehicle with both magnetic and vacuum suction tie-downs having a swiveling/flexible carabiner attached. I actually use both. Suction mounts for glass surfaces, and magnetic ones for metal surfaces. The vacuum suction type has a 3 inch base with a max hold of 44 lbs. The magnetic type having a 1.65 inch diameter base using neodymium and is rated for 140 lbs. While those weight specs might at first glance look like overkill for light panels, that rating is for a direct pull, and sideways stress is the weak point. So, one needs to choose seemingly beefy tie-downs, to assure a stable sideways capability.

Mounting the portable folding solar panels onto a vehicle, does take a vehicle out of a tree shaded parking option. For hot weather, and mounting a panel away from a vehicle, I’ve used a small computer/projector stand lightly modified for securing the panel. I do use guy lines to give it added stability in breezy conditions.

Hacked pc/projector stand

Your method to mounting a panel off of the ground is unlimited in imagination. It is a hack you’ll need to consider before buying panels, if your outdoor experiences will be taking you to an area having any amount of ground cover. Hopefully, this blog has jogged your imagination to come up with a custom solution for your set up.