I discovered that my solar panel is too weak. I am waiting for a new one to come in. The plan is to use an 18Watt panel. I had no idea how large my old one was. I have had it laying around collecting dust.

I have been using some LED lights in the evening to light my living room for now. They come as an expandable series of puck lights that normally hook up to a wall power supply. There are three pucks with 5 LEDs each. I cut the wires and hooked them up directly to my battery since they were 12 volts anyway. The puck lights work great to light up the room while watching tv.

When all the parts get here, I will post the sources of everything so that anyone who wants to copy this setup can do so.