Accessories

Great Price to Go Solar
For some reason I had some bad luck with this product arriving partially broken. The wonderful people at Amazon made everything alright and I'm really quite happy with my purchase now. These solar panels power a car battery that I found on the side of the road. That battery powers some 12 volt LED lights and a 120 volt inverter for small task in my shop.

Try it you'll like it. But don't be surprised if you have a broken panel or two when it arrives.

These work well
I bought three of these kits kits for a total of twelve panels. I use them to charge two 115 amp hour marine batteries. The panels seem to bring the batteries up to full charge (green light on) even though the panels are only in direct sunlight for about two hours a day. There are plenty of different connecters for a varity of hookups. The only thing I didn't like was the cheap plastic stand that comes with it. I threw mine out and made a good one out of 1 1/2" angle iron that is 14' long with twelve panels in a row, looks impressive too. Now I'm wondering what I could do with another twelve panels, these things are addictive!

good to tinker with
I bought one of these kits from Amazon.com. One of the panels was broken in the first shipment. Amazon had UPS pick everything up and sent me another kit. Everything was in good order in the second shipment.

I went to my local Wal-Mart and bought two EverStart Marine 27DC-6 deep cycle batteries (115 amp hours each - $143.62 total with tax) to use with this kit. I also purchased four heavy duty battery terminals for #2/0 wire ($12.82). I went to Home Depot and bought two 2ft strips of #2/0 wire ($14.17). I connected the batteries in parallel with the #2/0 wire.

In theory, this gives me 230 amp hours of storage. I mounted the panels onto the PVC pipe and put it on the roof of my house. The panels are facing East at an estimated 30 degree angle. I chose this location because you can't see the panels from the road (minimizing chance of theft).

However, the general guidelines are: solar panels should face South in the Northern Hemisphere and North in the Southern Hemisphere; A solar panel's angle should be set to the equivalent of your your latitude plus 15 degrees during winter, or minus 15 degrees in summer.

After installing the kit and hooking it up to my batteries, I left it alone for about one week. This gave it time to fully charge the batteries. Today (9-24-2008 -- sunny) I tested the output with a digital multimeter at 12:08pm CST. I am located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The charge controller output voltage was 14.19 volts; and the amps measured 2.61.

In order to measure the amps, move the red wire on the multimeter to the 10A DC plug. Turn the multimeter knob to 10A. The multimeter needs to be in between the battery and the charge controller. Imagine a Mom holding a child's hand and a Dad holding the other child's hand. The child is the multimeter. The Dad is the positive battery termial. The Mom is the red wire coming out of the charge controller and going to the battery.

Watts = Volts x Amps. So, the charge controller was outputting about 37 Watts. In order to maximize my batteries' life, I do not want the percentage of charge to ever drop below 80%. This is equivalent to a 12.46 volt meter reading with my digital multimeter. I got this kit to tinker with. This is my first solar kit. Right now I have the included 200-watt inverter hooked up to the batteries. It is providing AC power to my fish tank water filter. I am going to add more devices to the inverter each week until I start getting close to the 80% battery charge. I recommend buying a device called Kill-A-Watt by p3international (about $20). It will show you all of an AC device's power comsumption information.

Somewhat satisfied
The panels are great. I received a sunforce 200 watt inverter, which quit working after 2 weeks. After 3 weeks, the charge controller quit working. I bought a new 1000 watt inverter and a new 10 amp controller and now things are good.

Using for backup power in Florida
My husband and I don't like the noise of generators....nor do we want to store gasoline....With all of the hurricanes that blow thru here every year....as well as the FPL power outages that occur (even during regular storms)....we decided to put together a simple battery backup system to power a few items....This solar panel setup along with a few batteries does the job well....

The one thing we would like to change is the design of the two legs....We would prefer that they fold under the panels for storage purposes....They do not do that....They are fixed....