Has anyone used the West Marine 5W/350mA Solar Panel? Do You need the battery charge controller? The panel comes with 10' wire can it be extended to 15' without excessive loss?
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Solar panel controllers
Read WM's own advisor on charge controllers. It all depends on how big your house bank is, and we don't know that. 5 w is very small. We have an 11 watt connected to our 315 ah bank, no controller. Do the homework. Yes, an extension is fine, but check the voltage drop. Look in the WM catalog or any other written source in a book or online about voltage drop. Stu
Read WM's own advisor on charge controllers. It all depends on how big your house bank is, and we don't know that. 5 w is very small. We have an 11 watt connected to our 315 ah bank, no controller. Do the homework. Yes, an extension is fine, but check the voltage drop. Look in the WM catalog or any other written source in a book or online about voltage drop. Stu
350mw?
Does one even need a charge controller for that? Thats really, really small you know. I would just opt for a diode and be done with it.
Does one even need a charge controller for that? Thats really, really small you know. I would just opt for a diode and be done with it.
Forget it!
Bought two last year and did not last the season. Not water proof. Wire leads on the panel, under the frame corroded off making them useless pieces of junk.
Bought two last year and did not last the season. Not water proof. Wire leads on the panel, under the frame corroded off making them useless pieces of junk.
350 ma is ridiculously small
Why bother with such a small amount of current??? Assume full output for 8 hours a day and you only have 2.8 amp hours. That's not enough to run an anchor light!!! If you have shore power you can buy a 1.5 amp three stage charger at walmart for about $30.00 it will maintain a pretty large battery bank say 200AH. Tom
Why bother with such a small amount of current??? Assume full output for 8 hours a day and you only have 2.8 amp hours. That's not enough to run an anchor light!!! If you have shore power you can buy a 1.5 amp three stage charger at walmart for about $30.00 it will maintain a pretty large battery bank say 200AH. Tom
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