Harbor Freight 100 Watt Solar Kit
Looking for input on Harbor Freights 100 watt solar kit. A question I have is each kit comes with a controller if you put two kits together could you get by with one controller?
Forum Discussion
KD4UPL wrote:Sam Spade wrote:
Get a look at the "manual" that comes with the kit.
Some panels and controllers are made to be "chained" with a single controller and some are not.
Note: Since there are some losses involved, a 100 watt panel likely will produce only about .7 amps at 12 volts. Barely enough to float a fully charged large battery.
Two together will get you about 1.5 amps IN FULL SUN, which still really isn't much.
You're math is way off. Likely by a decimal place. A 100 watt panel likely has a Imp of around 5 or 6 amps.
OP, what's this kit cost? HF is know for selling over priced junk. Large solar panels sell for around 50 cents a watt. Smaller ones like you're looking at are usually about $1 a watt. If this panel is much over $100 it's too much. What kind of controller? I'll guess a small PWM model with no adjustable set points and not monitoring or display. You can buy one of those for $40 ish from a good manufacturer like Morningstar.
If the panel is rated Imp 6 amps and the controller is rated for at least 20 amps it should handle 2 panels. Anything less than 20 amps and you may be wasting power or burning out the controller on a clear cold day when panels put out more current.
a lot of misinformation, the kit is 4 25 watt panels, and has 4.5 stars, the kit works fine, its a bit large for its wattage, but there is certainly nothing wrong with it. and yes it uses the cheap pwm charger, not sure what you expect at this price point. the double price suitcase kits on amazon aren't using a much better controller either.
and yes the math is way off its not .7 its 6-7A.
