Solar trickle charging battery

[karlrmac]

So I looked through other topics and could find what I was looking for, so here goes...
We store our travel trailer off site. It has plenty of sun access (another subject) and today I remove the battery and bring it home and put it on a little trickle charger. Our new trailer (Rockwood 2909) has a solar plug built on and I am wondering if I can just put a 10 watt panel with a charge controller and mount it on the trailer and let it keep the battery juiced? I’d like to do something instead of removing the battery all time. Any suggestions would be great.
Thanks - Karl

[Flybob]

You can add a charge controller and a solar panel to keep the battery charged, but I would not use anything less than about 50W panel. A ten watt panel will not keep up with the parasitic draw from the always on items. My recommendation is if you think you will ever use the solar for more than storage to buy a larger controller up front. This way you just need to add panels and probably upgrade the wiring.

[karlrmac]

Originally Posted by Flybob

You can add a charge controller and a solar panel to keep the battery charged, but I would not use anything less than about 50W panel. A ten watt panel will not keep up with the parasitic draw from the always on items. My recommendation is if you think you will ever use the solar for more than storage to buy a larger controller up front. This way you just need to add panels and probably upgrade the wiring.

Flybob, if I flip the switch to kill all power going into the trailer from the battery, would the 10watt panel be sufficient to trickle the battery?