Description
- ⚡【Function】The solar panel and charge controller form a basic off-grid solar kit for charging and maintaining 12V batteries, such as sealed lead-acid, lithium, LiFePO4, Gel, Flooded and AGM batteries. In full sunlight, the 25w solar panel kit can produce 100Wh of electricity. Works even on cloudy days. It is the perfect thing to keep your battery topped off!（Module goes to maintenance when charged）
- 💎【Durable Panel】With a low-iron tempered glass surface and corrosion-resistant aluminum frame, the solar panel is protected against weathering and wear. It can withstand wind pressure up to 2400 Pa and snow load up to 5400 Pa. The panel is waterproof, making it ideal for outdoor or winter use. Consists of monocrystalline cells for high conversion efficiency.
- 🔋【Protect the Battery】The 10A PWM charge controller in this kit allows the expansion by wiring more 12V 25W panels in parallel. It also can prevent the battery from overcharging, over-discharging, over-voltage, short circuit, and reverse current issues. 2 indicators for easy observation of charging and discharging status. With USB 5V/2A output port.
- ⛵【360°Adjustable Mount】Equipped with solar mounting brackets, the mounting angle can be adjusted for better sunlight reception. Pre-drilled holes on the back of the panel facilitate quick installation and securing. The connection cable is SAE connector, easy to connect and install. The 25w solar battery charger & maintainer kit is perfect for boat，tractor，trailer，truck，RV,generator，shed，electric fence，pump.
- 💗【What’s in box】You will get 1pc 25W mono solar panel, 1pc 10A pwm charge controller, 1pc 1.54ft cables with alligator clips and 1pc 1.38ft cables with O-ring terminal.
Kindle Customer –
I love this. I leave it on my hard to start John Deere 4230 tractor. It keeps the batteries Hot!
geno –
For the price it works as described. If you tinker with things as a hobby, you can find obvious to little upgrades you can make yourself. If you are looking to simply keep a 12v battery charged this will do that. Would recommend.
Cracker –
bought this in 2019, £40, now its shot up in price.
im running a 12v pond pump with this, it works very well.
Gary Mooney –
My purpose was to run a couple of lights in a shed. Put a small inverter off of the battery.
I put a 10ah lifepo4 battery with it and it works for my purpose.
Can’t speak to anything beyond that.
It is, however, a complete kit, just add a battery, and fot that I gave it 5 stars.
It can be had on sale from time to time for 39.00 or so.
Overall a good value (for me)
J. Bucher –
I bought this system for my enclosed motorcycle trailer. It charges the trailer battery and runs some interior lights. The system was easy to install and works great. The controller clearly shows when the solar is charging the battery. I would recommend this system to anyone wanting to upgrade to a solar charging/operating system. The price was excellent and the quality is good.
Ron Cobra –
Nice solar panel BUT I didn’t get to install or use it because I had to turn right around and return it after delivery. A used product was sent to me. The ends of some of the wires were cut off and the battery clips looked used. This product looks like it would be great if everything was new and not tampered with. I may try to order it again in hopes of receiving a new unused product.
Kindle Customer –
The solar panel and the charge controller itself work great. The wires are junk, wasting 10-20% of the total solar power and causing charging issues. The charge controller is not waterproof or even water resistant, and it takes patience to attach wires to the green connector. Otherwise, the charger works well. Rather than return it, I fixed these problems for about 15 dollars.
Actual specs:
I measured this unit putting 1.4 amps into my low car battery on a sunny day in December in Maine. That’s about 18 watts in the middle of winter, pretty good for a 20 watt panel. That was before I fixed the wiring.
The label on the back of the solar panel has slightly different specs than the Amazon title. It says 25 watts max power. See attached photo.
Charge controller:
The included charge controller works well. It’s an intelligent 3A PWM charger that automatically switches through 3 charging phases: bulk, absorption, float (trickle). It has an LED to indicate when it has solar power and what charging phase it’s in. It will prevent over discharging below 10.8 volts and over charging above 14.4 volts.
At one point I thought my charger was broken and started looking for a replacement. A decent PWM charger like this runs 15-20, so it’s a decent value. I later discovered the charger was fine, the problem was the cheap included wires (see below).
I was a little worried about the charger consuming battery power when there isn’t any sun. Cheaper chargers use a little battery power overnight and on very cloudy days while waiting for the sun to come back. I wanted to leave my system unattended for months during our short and cloudy winter days without discharging my battery, so I can’t tolerate much current drain when the sun is gone. Amazon didn’t list the current drain when I bought it. I measured the charger’s current drain with no sun at about 1mA. That seems pretty reasonable compared to 10-50mA with other chargers. The charger ships with a spec sheet, which lists the current drain as 1.5mA (see attached).
The spec sheet says the charger is made for Gel batteries. It seems to work fine on my SUV car battery though.
Cheap wires:
I measured my battery voltage while charging on a sunny day. 13-14 volts is normal, but I was only getting 12.4 volts. I thought the controller had gone bad so I tried another one. Same problem. I tried lots of things, went over all the connections many many times but nothing worked. It definitely had power coming from the solar panel, it just wasn’t getting to the battery. Over a few days I did notice the battery charge increasing very slowly, but the charger kept thinking the battery was fully charged too soon and kept turning off (trickle mode) too early. I finally had the idea to check the battery voltage at the other end of the battery wires (where they connect to the charger). The charger was putting out 13.6 volts at about 1.5 amps, but only 12.4 volts was getting to the battery. That’s 10% of the solar power being wasted by wire resistance! It was also enough to fool the charger into thinking the battery was charged and switching to a low power mode, which throws away even more of the generated power. It will still charge your battery eventually assuming you aren’t using the battery for something else, but it will be slow.
I replaced all the wire with normal 16 gauge wire, and it fixed everything. I measured 13.6 volts at the charger and 13.5 volts at the battery while charging at 1.5 amps. It charges much faster now, and I can use the battery to power other things. I attached a picture of the cheap wires they include and some normal 16AWG wires I replaced them with. On the outside it’s deceiving because the cheap wires look reasonably thick. But if you cut into it you’ll see the cheap wires are almost all rubber insulation and have very little actual metal inside.
Replacement wire: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NSGCVWI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_feSyyb487STEM
Waterproofing:
The actual solar panel appears waterproof and has white silicone around the edges on the back. However the charger is definitely NOT waterproof. It came with clear silicone applied along the bottom of the green connector, but that’s pointless since the top and sides of the connector have bigger openings and were left unsealed. I needed the charger to work outside in the winter in rain, snow, ice, etc., so any water intrusion could easily freeze and damage things. You could always buy silicone and seal all the openings including the holes in the green connector where the wires attach, but then it will be a pain if you ever want to remove and reattach the wires later. I ended up opening the charger box and spraying conformal coat to waterproof all the electronics. Then I drilled a 1/8″ hole in the white box to allow any water that gets in to drain back out. Takes about 10 minutes. So far it’s holding up well to our Maine winter environment!
Conformal coat: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BXSMNWG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_AbSyybQ2NH5G4
I didn’t see any of this information posted anywhere else, so hopefully some people will find this info helpful!
Rob martin –
I had been using a mains battery charger to come on for an hour each day to charge the battery of my Jaguar XK8 in the garage, but didn’t like the idea of it, so looked for a solar alternative. Have now used the panel for three weeks and it is superb, although we have had little sun, the battery shows a constant 12.8 volts all the time. The charge panel shows a solid green led, showing its charged. I put it onto a flat battery and the led blinks as it charges until it reaches 12 volts, then holds it at that. On the down side, the instructions are very basic, and the led unit, I had to put Velcro on the adhere to the wall as it does not have a fixing itself, and the panel itself has no holes so had to make my own brackets, but in operation its superb.
David McGuire –
Four stars for the panel plus a fifth star for great service.
This is a good product for the price backed up by GREAT customer service at any price.
Then panel came with days of ordering it and was sufficiently well packed that there wasn’t any breakage.
When I hooked it up to test it for the first time I couldn’t get it to send any charge to my battery. The panel seemed to be putting out
voltage but none of it was getting through the controller. i was pretty bummed but sent off an email to the vendor DC HOUSE expecting to wait for who knew how long for a reply. I was totally pleased when I got a reply back in less than 12 hours.
The contact at DC House had me do a couple of tests, asked a few questions about how i had hooked it up (turns out you have to hook the battery to the controller BEFORE you attach the panel) and after a couple of email exchanges determined that the controller must be faulty. They immediately sent out a replacement, which came in the mail two days later and now it all works just fine..
I purchased this panel to mount on my car while its in storage and it looks like its going to work out well. I’ve only tested it out for short periods of time so far but with not moving parts its hard to see how it might fail. Thanks again to DC House for the quick and expert help and the fast resolution to my problem.
Robert Degavino –
A durable product
bazil –
The charge controller in mine didn’t work, but since they are only like $20 I just bought another one. The odd thing about this set up, it doesn’t function by itself. Meaning, you can’t just run the panel, charge controller, then a USB device for example. Instead it seems to draw power from the battery, function everything from the battery, and charge the battery as a secondary. In short, it needs the battery to function at all.
You can’t just leave it on the grass in the sun, connect a phone charger to the USB port, and let it trickle charge/etc. You have to connect it to a battery, which is different from all the other ones I’ve bought. Just something to consider if you’re planning to boondock or something with this.
J. Madison –
I have this hooked up to a battery I use at a camp for lights and trolling motor and it works great.