Swing up solar panel mounting

[DRP]

would be easy to do so. Pythagoras solved it ~2500yrs ago. That and a little Trig (2300yrs ago). All you need is a base edge pivot setup and a pivoting leg or stirrup that is mounted on both 'side' edges, with that 'base' leg sized to match your panel to the optimum angle for your latitude. With an appropriate slot setup in your mounting frame all you'd need is a couple wingnuts / threaded hand knobs, loosen them, lift up on the high edge of the panel until the linkage maxes out, then tighten them. You could even add a pneumatic arm so all you'd have to do is loosen a knob and the panel pops open to height. YOu'd just have to push it flat and tighten

This could almost work for me mounted vertical with longer or extending adjustment poles. Problem I see is with the panel extending past the pivot point it won't go up past level

Keep ideas coming, thanks

Here is a pretty slick sliding setup. https://oriondesigns.ca/

 

[xvz12]

For my setup, I built mounts almost identical to the one rayra has pictured, just cost a few bucks. Aluminum came from Home Depot, the knobs from eBay. Not wanting to bore holes in the roof, I mounted them with 3M VHB tape. I have been using them for 3 years now, been working fine for me so far.

 

[Buckstopper]

I took a similar but different approach on my cab mount. I used Yakima rack to mount the panel without drilling holes on the roof so the pivot is simply the Yakima bar mounts. The struts were from a panel tilting kit that I purchased from Renogy Solar on sale so it was pretty inexpensive. I have an extra loop of cable from this panel to the rest of the array because I need the slack to be able to tilt the cab of the truck and also raise the popup top of the camper.

Here it is in drive mode:


And deployed:

 

[shade]

I took a similar but different approach on my cab mount. I used Yakima rack to mount the panel without drilling holes on the roof so the pivot is simply the Yakima bar mounts. The struts were from a panel tilting kit that I purchased from Renogy Solar on sale so it was pretty inexpensive. I have an extra loop of cable from this panel to the rest of the array because I need the slack to be able to tilt the cab of the truck and also raise the popup top of the camper.

Here it is in drive mode:
View attachment 559714

And deployed:

View attachment 559715

I may do something similar with a 100W panel on the cab of my truck, in front of my pop-up camper. I think it'll increase fuel economy, but I may end up adding sound damping material under the headliner. When I had a roof rack, there was a significant amount of wind noise through the roof.

 

[Buckstopper]

I previously had a roof rack on the cab and it was noisy and added drag for really no real benifit as I only had some maxtrax in it. This is quieter (I can't hear anything over the engine noise) and with the clear plastic faring the Fuso aerodynamics have transformed from a somewhat hairy brick to a nice streamlined brick but its still a brick so fuel economy really didn't change one way or the other.

 

[DRP]

Well nothing off the shelf would work for me so I went went the way of a scratch design

That's a 195 watt panel

Swings up to become an awning and / or face the sun and is easy to remove and deploy in the sun

I can cross this one off the list. I have managed to get 795 watts on a 22' RV