P
Philip Lewis
- Jan 1, 1970
- 0
So with the 20% extra discount, I managed to pick one of these kits up
from the local HF store for $171.20US.
From the directions, it would seem that the kit should work to power
items without the battery connected. Can someone confirm that that is
how theirs operates?
With no battery and full sun, no lights operate on the supplied box.
With battery, things work hunky dory.
It's not clear if the thing was topping off the batteries or not... I
heard the pizzo alarm on upon first connecting the system (don't
remember if there was a battery on it at that point or not)
beeped for about 5-10 seconds then stopped.
After two weeks of sporaticly using the supplied 5w bulbs... an
occasional 120W fan (via the vector 800W model... wish the thermal fan
only came on when it was actually hot...) and charging the cell phone,
the battery still read 12.1V under 129W +vector's phantom worth of load.
The panels put out between 21 and 23 Volts each without a load... I
did not load test them. we apparently were only putting 40ma into the
charging circuit when we checked it.
I may try for a new controler box from them if it should work without battery.
Eventually i'll get/build a "real" charge controler, but if this one
works for now, I'll use it.
from the local HF store for $171.20US.
From the directions, it would seem that the kit should work to power
items without the battery connected. Can someone confirm that that is
how theirs operates?
With no battery and full sun, no lights operate on the supplied box.
With battery, things work hunky dory.
It's not clear if the thing was topping off the batteries or not... I
heard the pizzo alarm on upon first connecting the system (don't
remember if there was a battery on it at that point or not)
beeped for about 5-10 seconds then stopped.
After two weeks of sporaticly using the supplied 5w bulbs... an
occasional 120W fan (via the vector 800W model... wish the thermal fan
only came on when it was actually hot...) and charging the cell phone,
the battery still read 12.1V under 129W +vector's phantom worth of load.
The panels put out between 21 and 23 Volts each without a load... I
did not load test them. we apparently were only putting 40ma into the
charging circuit when we checked it.
I may try for a new controler box from them if it should work without battery.
Eventually i'll get/build a "real" charge controler, but if this one
works for now, I'll use it.