These things are great for backpacking, take my word for it.
solar?
hmmm . . . well . . .
here’s to the sun god!
he’s such a FUN god!!
RA! RA! RA!!
At first glance, I thought it was a treadmill.
So if I spend $800 for 8 of these, it will take me 12 hours to charge a golf cart…not exactly a compelling reason to get out the credit card.
I used to work for a VW dealer, and the VW cars would ship with pretty decent solar panels in the windows to keep the batteries up. Most dealerships threw them away or gave them away. I think you could buy them on ebay for $10 or so last I checked. Probably not as powerful, but for the average person’s purposes, as adequate as this unit for way less coin.
That’s not correct. 4D and 8D are types of marine batteries. A typical alkaline non-rechargable batter D-cell battery would be 12Ah, or 48Ah for 4. Which is much less than the 180Ah listed for “4-D” in the description.
It looks like this is aimed at more heavy-duty vehicle and boat batteries. It’s unclear if this can be used for charging standard consumer batteries (A/AA/AAA/C/D etc).
Simple! Get 325 of them all together, then strip wiring and encircle it around a big metal pipe, apply sunlight as it’s highest point while placing pipe in pool, and wallah! Heated pool. Now you can change the temperature by simply using more or less of these devices.
2 minilamps? That sounds small.
OK, first off: A little confused. How do eight, daisy-chained, 12V, 1.2A DC solar panels power a small cabin? One, it’s DC. Do we need to buy an adapter for this?Two, it outputs 18W. What is in this small cabin? Certainly no light bulbs!
Second:
Wonderful. Simply wonderful. I wonder who is in charge of the filter. Maybe their time could be better spent looking into alternatives to the overly wide site.
I have always enjoyed buying useless junk on Woot. i have garage shelves full of fun things I haven’t bothered opening yet - boc’s, a few remote control cars and helicopters. Things that just seemed like a good idea at the time, but when they arrive, I realize that I need to sneak them by the wife or I will get into trouble. This however, is something I absolutely need. I have actually been doing tons of research the last few days on a solar power system. I am traveling overseas to Nepal, were they only currently only have electricity 6-8 hours a day, and usually not when it is needed. With this, a battery (which I can get locally) and a few 12 v lights, I’ll be party central! I almost pulled the trigger on a similar system this morning, at would have cost more than $200. Thanks woot! I can now rationalize all those boxes in my closet!
Dear Woot Admin.,
I have the same question. Can you please tell us if this is something we can use to charge our laptops, t.v.s, cell phones, etc. with a regular two/three prong power cord. I will undoubtedly purchase this if I can use to eco-friendly charge something I normally use. I do not own a boat or RV…
Has anyone ever heard of inverters, and dc lights?
Well, I had a 45w system that was charging the battery in my trailer. It is extremely over kill, but once we were actually running the stereo, the lights, the pump, etc…it did a fair job of restoring the battery to a decent degree. As far as running a laptop, you would have to have an inverter plugged into this and all it would do is slowly trickle charge the laptop battery at best.
I am not an electrician, so I don’t know if it will actually have enough juice to run an inverter to charge the battery. It definitely will not run a laptop though. It would probably run some led lights for you though.
Great response. People do not seem to realize how low the power output of these truly are. Panel inconsistencies, sunlight inconsistencies and output voltage ranges and currents all combine to make these panels good for charging batteries but incapable of running any decent sized items reliably, if at all.
Found some more reviews over on alatest:
http://alatest.com/reviews/miscellaneous/solar-trickle-charger-for-cars-and-boats/po3-64769638,2/
Or maybe this isn’t the same model? Looks like it’s for car/boat.
Just one review on this I could find…
Reviews of Sunsei Solar Charger
And some more solar chargers for comparison’s sake…
I don’t know. A quick look at my MBP charger says that it takes about 1.5A at 120V which it outputs at a maximum of 4.5A at 16.5-18.5V. Doesn’t look like you are going to get that kind of power out of a single 1.2A, 12V solar panel. Maybe if you’ve got one of the little MB power supplies.
This seems really cool, and actually really really wierd because I was conceptualizing this exact thing to-, er, yesterday when I was packing up the stuff from my girlfriend’s hospital stay… A bit pricey especially given the size, and I’ve never heard of the brand before… so pass, this time, with hopes it’ll be on sellout for cheaper soon 
Hmmm…
Actually, not a bad deal, if it works. The charge controller is actually a pretty big deal. If you find a good deal on a solar panel that doesn’t have one, and buy it, you’ll soon find yourself shopping for a charge controller. A solar panel without a charge controller is pretty much like a car without tires. Useless.
I’m having a hard time deciding here. Two of these would cover my needs for my camper, for much less money than what the “good stuff” costs. Then again, if I get the “good stuff”, I don’t have to worry about whether it will work or not.
Going by the specs, this is a hell of a deal. I’m just not sure whether to take a chance on this, or spend a few hundred more and know that my weekends at the campground won’t be ruined by crappy equipment…
This is a solar charging system. It is not designed to run devices directly off the panel output. You need a storage device, (i.e. battery) to make this work correctly. The controller is designed to assure that the battery charges properly and does not over charge. This one looks like you may also be able to set the output voltage on the charge controller as well.
I think you are confusing watts with amps. Watts = volts*amps. To charge you need a higher voltage than the chemistry of the battery provides to charge it. So anything over 12V could charge a 12V battery.