solar battery charger ,does anybody know this item - link.

[moshem74]

does anybody know this item , is it good thing to have ?

http://cgi.ebay.com/SOLAR-PANEL-12-VOLT-BATTERY-CHARGER-CAR-TRUCK-BOAT-RV_W0QQitemZ5637018375QQcategoryZ14951QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

or this one:

http://cgi.ebay.com/1-8W-Weatherproof-Solar-Car-Battery-Charger-Westfield_W0QQitemZ8015276751QQcategoryZ9895QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

thank you.

[soobme]

Yup! I use 'em all the time. Don't think of it so much as a batt. charger, but as somthing that will keep your'e batt. from going dead from siting, and they de-sulfate your'e batt. so they will last longer, A LOT longer. U can get 'em @ Horbor friegth for about $18 and some times they go on sale for $11.

[nipper]

They make great trickle chargers. They wont charge a dead battery in a car, but they will maintain them. They will charge a disconnected battery.

 

nipper

[Subarian]

The Army uses them to maintain batteries on equipment that tends to sit for a long time. One caveat is that they're kind of fragile.

[Esteban32696]

Here you go. On sale at Harbor Freight=$9.99

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=44768

[jacobs]

These solar chargers are amorphous cells which are very short lived when left outside. The military uses silicone cells. The silicone cells cost more but they will outlast many cars (usually 30+ years) so in the long run they really are less expensive. Like most things, when you buy quality items you usually end up saving money.

[Hank Roberts]

Silicon, not silicone -- the discrete roundish things wired together inside the panel are the individual chips.

 

The cheaper stuff is the flat smooth material ("amorphous").

 

Note if your cigar lighter socket is not "hot" when the car's turned off, those panels won't be connected to the battery, and you have to find a way to wire them on instead.

 

I use panels (http://www.realgoods.com, although there must be cheaper sources) that have alligator clips and run the wire through the body/fender space to the battery when I leave the car sitting a while.

[zyewdall]

Silicon, not silicone -- the discrete roundish things wired together inside the panel are the individual chips.

 

The cheaper stuff is the flat smooth material ("amorphous").

 

Note if your cigar lighter socket is not "hot" when the car's turned off, those panels won't be connected to the battery, and you have to find a way to wire them on instead.

 

I use panels (www.realgoods.com, although there must be cheaper sources) that have alligator clips and run the wire through the body/fender space to the battery when I leave the car sitting a while.

 

Actually all of them are silicon except for a few exceptions -- mostly calculators and such -- which are cadmium telluride, or copper indium disulfide. The amorphous silicon is not as efficient (3-6%) compared to the crystalline silicon (up to 20% for the high end stuff), but it's flexible (unisolar brand is at least, because they don't use glass). We use it for roofing membrane or laminate onto steel roofing. It's not actually any cheaper for large areas, although the little car chargers seem to be cheaper for the amorphous ones. I work designing 20,000 sq ft PV arrays for commercial buildings, so I look at all the different types all the time. I put these little modules (between 5 and 20 watts) on all of my cars -- mostly just to maintain the battery if I let it sit for a long time, although I also run lights, radio, and inverter from them sometimes. My work truck is getting a 80 watt panel soon. Be aware that the little car charger ones are often not water proof, whereas you can do just about anything to the bigger ones without hurting them. (I've seen the the unisolar modules with large dents from blowing off roofs, and they still work fine)

 

The desulfators deliver a very high current pulse of energy to the battery to knock sulfate crystals off of the plates. This pulse can either be from a solar panel, or from energy taken from the battery itself (in which case you need an auxiliary charger to make up for the small draw of the desulfator). I've had good luck with the second type, but never tried the first, since I always had a much larger PV array charging the battery anyway.

 

backwoodssolar.com has a little cheaper prices than real goods, and there are hundreds of other internet stores out there selling solar panels too. A far cry from 1985 when I got my first one and there were only two retailers in the entire US.