Customer Reviews

Sunforce 50032 15 Watt Solar Battery Charger

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I purchased 6 of these for a backup system for my home. Two Northern units and 4 Sunforce units all 15 watt. ( these are the exact same units btw, northern's are cheaper). With two inverters, a 2500 watt, and a 300 watt pure sinewave for computers and such. Hooked through a 7 amp charge controller to a pair of 110 amp hour deep cells in parallel for a total of 220 amp hr's.

I first hooked two panels up to see how they did, they worked well in very low light but couldn't ever get the batteries to "full" on the controller. I then hooked up a third panel and that gave enough to bring the batteries to full after a full day. With six panels hooked up, it will bring the batteries to "full" in a very few hours from a 30% drained condition.

These units are less then optimally placed and rarely get full sun, but do very well even without that. Two panels in full sun may very well have been able to bring the batteries to "full" but location is a problem for me. One other product of note is the P3 international "Kill A Watt" electrical useage meter. Doing a survey of electrical useage in my house to get ready for this project was an eye opener to say the least.

Great panels, at a good price, that do what you pay for...all you can ask for.

No problems with delivery (of two panels). Worked right out of the box, getting great wattage out of it. Only nit is I would have preferred a seperate power cable, vs. attached.

Mounting holes made it easy to build a PVC stand.

Haven't found another panel with these specs at this price.

I put this on top of a metal storage container with 3 LED lights inside. I put in a controller and a 12 volt deep cyle battery, and I have lots of light.

Just for grins I put in a 400 watt inverter in case anyone wanted to run a battery charger for a DeWalt cordless drill. Great job site problem solver.

Got mine undamaged from northerntool for $92.40 (with shipping and tax). A quick DVM reading (laid out flat on ground in full sun at 2PM June 19th 2007 in Minnesota): 21 volts and 0.8 amps = 16.8 watts. Now $92.40 for 16.8 watts works out to $5.50/watt, which is a very competitive price these days (note that they only warranty up to 80% of rated output). I plan to use this to drive a 12V fountain pump. According to the specsheet, "Yes, this panel is fully weatherproofed." Nevertheless, I wish it came with a plastic hail guard, as the glass feels delicate. Looks like the same product as the Sunforce 50032.

It was simple to install on top of my RV. I was able to put a cover over the panel and keep getting the sunlight to charge the batteries. It charges even through glass on the inside of the RV.

It arrived quickly and in perfect condition. It produced the rated open circuit voltage and short circuit current in full sunshine per the specifications. It was a good buy, very good for maintaining a battery, but you must use a charge controller. You need several along with a charge controller if you intend to produce enough power for useful work. I use 5 (similar) together with a 100 amp/hour marine battery to power my laptop. I'd like to add a few more! Great for the hobbyist who wants to play with solar without a large expense, also useful for low power off grid applications. It has been outside during several large rainstorms and had no problems.

Puts out 24 v in Sept PA sun @ 15 w power. With voltage regulator and deep cycling storage battery with or without inverter will keep your house/ shed/ workshop low amp tools and lights running from sundown to bedtime. I have cut my electric bill $10 per month with this unit so in two years it will have paid for itself including all accessories. Great panel, great shipping.

It comes with a nice long cord which was long enough to reach from the corner of the room of my RV down the refrigerator vent where I connected it to my 7 am charge controller and ran a wire underneath to the battery. This cord has a plug on the end to connect to one of several connectors included. (No wire splicing necessary). It comes with connectors for connecting to a cigarette lighter, alligator clips for connecting directly to battery posts, as well as a connector that just splits off two wires with the insulation already removed for you in case you need to wire them directly into something, or extend them with more wire. It also includes a LED test light that can plug directly into the solar panels cord to test whether the panel is working.

I have attached two of these solar panels to the roof of my RV camper. They keep the battery fully charged even with the propane detector still using electricity. I was able to screw the panel directly into my rubber roof with the screws provided with no problem. They are very secure and they were a great investment.

Got this panel for under $70 bucks. The panel came in a very securly packed package. It generate more than it advertised. I measured over 20 watts while it's in direct sun light. One thing that's should improve is that the core could be longer.

I'm 95% sure this unit and the Sunforce 50032 are the same thing (except for maybe the boxes they're placed in). The phamplet that came with this on how to wire it up was identicle to one that came with the Sunforce 7 amp controller and shows several other panels including what appears to be the sunforce 50044 kit (I ordered the panels I have from Northern Tool but the controller from Amazon). So everything is hinting they're all the same thing in different packages. I didn't actually see any "Sunforce" names or logos on the products, but the boxes were the only thing saying "Northern tools" specifically likewise.
I got 5 of these about 2 years ago and didn't do any tests at that point (except plug them in and see that my battery voltage did slowly rise). I recently became curious about how much power am I really getting from the panels I got, so I set up a test. On a fully sunny day I placed a panel in direct sunlight, aimed it to get as much power as I could (watching my Fluke meter that was measuring the amps going from the panel to a small battery) and I could only get ~0.3 amps (which is ~4 watts). I thought maybe the battery was near fully charged and not accepting much power, so I plugged in a heater that draws at least 5 amps off of the battery, but that only increased the output of the panel to ~0.4amps (or ~5 watts). I tried another panel to see if it was just that one, but the 2nd one had about the same performance. I don't know if the lack of output is just because I'm not living in the south or didn't try that at high noon, but I wouldn't expect that big a difference (especially when I gave it the benefit by doing my best to aim it to get the best sunlight/power). So if these are really supposed to be able to give you 15 watts of power, I'm left wondering what are the ideal conditions that you need for such (or to at least be getting something close to 1amp output rather than just 0.4 or 40% of it's label)?
I've also since done some math on the cost of solar panels versus the power they give. If you really want to get into solar power, a panel (or set of panels) that can give you 1000 watts (or 1 kiloWatt) costs ~$5000, yet that can save me as little as $0.10 on your power bill per hour of use. So that means it'll take 50,000 hours of use for them to pay for themselves (which is over 15 years at ~8 hours of full power per day). To get enough power to fully run a house can require you to have panels adding up to 10,000 watts available and get into costs like $50,000+ (especially if you need to store up enough power to last you thru the nights & days that are cloudy where your power is greatly reduced). The panels put out DC power, so to store that power and convert it into household power requires batteries and power inverters as additional costs (in up front and maintenance).
So unless you have a lot of money you're willing to put into such and realize your return will take more than a few years, solar power doesn't seem like a great solution for the energy problem.