Harbor Freight 45 Watt Solar Kit Warning

[Sunking]

OK this is a sticky for all you thinking about buying a HF 45 watt kit. Short story is you are being ripped off. You are paying some $180 for for something that has very little practical use. To add insult to injury with the panels being Thin Film are only going to last about 5 years.

The kit includes 3 15 watt Amorphous silicon solar panels. The spec on each panel is Vmp = 20 volts Imp = .75 amps. It also includes a 3 amp Series Voltage Regulator. Now this is where it gets interesting. You are instructed to wire the panels in parallel which will give an array of 20 volts @ 2.25 amps into the series voltage regulator at best. On the output of the regulator (It is not a charge controller in the traditional sense) you will have roughly 13 volts @ 2.25 amps on it's best day. Here is the fun part 13 volts x 2.25 amps = 29 watts. That is if you are lucky.

Know what you can do with that 29 watts?. Charge up a cell phone or a few flash light batteries. Is that what you expect for $180? If you wanted to charge up say a 12 volt battery. The largest battery you could use is roughly a 20 to 30 AH 12 volt battery. That size battery is capable or running a 50 watt max inverter at full power for roughly 1-1/2 hours. Wow a whole 50 watt light bulb for 1.5 hours. Forgot that battery and inverter will cost you another $100 or so.

Think about that you will sink some $300 to generate less than 1/10 of a penny of electricity per day. Is that what you expected? Come winter month and only half that amount. Basically the HF kit is a way over priced cell phone charger, and a poor one at that. So if you have not bought it yet, pass on it, and let the next guy buy it.

Here is a tip for you. Thin Film panels should cost roughly $1/watt or less. You are paying $180 for 45 watts, or roughly $4/watt, and that gets you Chi-Com low quality junk. The box the stuff comes in is worth more than what is in it.

[PNjunction]

I agree with Sunking's overall assessment. And I didn't even purchase the kit, but bought the panels separately and found out the hard way since I'm prone to instant-gratification impulses.

But now that you have it, what can you do?

While some may consider it throwing good money after bad, the easiest inexpensive upgrade would be to swap out their charge controller with a small PWM type, such as a Morningstar, Steca, Xantrex etc. A 4.5amp to 6amp unit would be nifty.

Unless you are mounting these things permanently outdoors, when not in use, cover the panels so they are not exposed to light. Wild, huh? If you were to upgrade to a quality mono or polycrystalline panel, you wouldn't have to worry about that, and it would be about 1/3 to 2/3rds the size, saving you some real estate. If the HF kit came with a crystalline wafer panel, it wouldn't look so impressive at first glance.

If you swap the 50 watt incandescent light bulb for a 13 watt CFL to give near the equivalent light output, you just might make it through much of the night with a 20-30ah agm battery.

Right now one of my 45 watt non-hf panels is doing yeoman job charging up the 22ah agm inside a Sears diehard 1150 automotive jump-starter with included dc outlets, AC inverter and air-pump. Consumer quality for sure, but handier than the HF controller box in my opinion. While the included ac charger is 1amp with a smart charger inside, I charge from solar via one of the DC cigarettte lighter jacks. The output of the panel goes to a Morningstar Sunguard charge controller, and then into the dc cigarette jack since it is directly wired to the battery through the oem 15a fuse, much like they detail for charging from an automotive setup with a male-to-male cigarette adapter cable. I DO NOT charge from AC at the same time. The maximum input of the agm is rated about 6amps, so the 45 watt panel is well below this limit. Metering helps me keep an eye on things, but I trust my Fluke voltmeter to tell me the real truth. Never go below 50% DOD, so that means that I only have 11ah to play with.

Certainly, this isn't really off-grid, but more of a camping type setup. But, if you have one of these kits, and keep power limitations in mind, you can get creative and have fun. The hope is that if the kit turns out to be a bust, at least you'll get some hands-on with battery maintenance and other solar power/time/capacity issues to help make a more informed decision when you want to get real.

If you want to get serious, save time/money/effort, you can do MUCH better going DIY with a higher quality and a better-engineered system yourself with the help of the stickies and faqs.

[RussN9ZP]

OK this is a sticky for all you thinking about buying a HF 45 watt kit. Short story is you are being ripped off. You are paying some $180 for for something that has very little practical use. To add insult to injury with the panels being Thin Film are only going to last about 5 years.

The kit includes 3 15 watt Amorphous silicon solar panels. The spec on each panel is Vmp = 20 volts Imp = .75 amps. It also includes a 3 amp Series Voltage Regulator. Now this is where it gets interesting. You are instructed to wire the panels in parallel which will give an array of 20 volts @ 2.25 amps into the series voltage regulator at best. On the output of the regulator (It is not a charge controller in the traditional sense) you will have roughly 13 volts @ 2.25 amps on it's best day. Here is the fun part 13 volts x 2.25 amps = 29 watts. That is if you are lucky.

Know what you can do with that 29 watts?. Charge up a cell phone or a few flash light batteries. Is that what you expect for $180? If you wanted to charge up say a 12 volt battery. The largest battery you could use is roughly a 20 to 30 AH 12 volt battery. That size battery is capable or running a 50 watt max inverter at full power for roughly 1-1/2 hours. Wow a whole 50 watt light bulb for 1.5 hours. Forgot that battery and inverter will cost you another $100 or so.

Think about that you will sink some $300 to generate less than 1/10 of a penny of electricity per day. Is that what you expected? Come winter month and only half that amount. Basically the HF kit is a way over priced cell phone charger, and a poor one at that. So if you have not bought it yet, pass on it, and let the next guy buy it.

Here is a tip for you. Thin Film panels should cost roughly $1/watt or less. You are paying $180 for 45 watts, or roughly $4/watt, and that gets you Chi-Com low quality junk. The box the stuff comes in is worth more than what is in it.

As usual right on point! Almost like you've owned a set. I have a couple sets laying around and they are not by any means the best bang for the buck. Unfortunately i bought mine before finding this site, rookie mistake

[Sunking]

As usual right on point! Almost like you've owned a set.

No Sir never owned one. Got my first panel 10 or 11 years ago free left over from the commercial build I made. Crazy as it it sounds I was designing the things before I actually ever laid my hands on one.

[green]

I found a distibuter that will sell you a 50 Watt Poly-Crystaline panel, a 10 A charge controller, and all the wires for less than the HF kit. I won't post a link to it out of respect for the forum sponsor. The aim of this site was to save people that were considering the HF kit and provide quality kits to people that want to start small to learn more about solar.

Green

[Naptown]

No Sir never owned one. Got my first panel 10 or 11 years ago free left over from the commercial build I made. Crazy as it it sounds I was designing the things before I actually ever laid my hands on one.

Familiar story, sounds a lot like me!

[PNjunction]

The other thing I don't like to see are more than two panels in parallel without fusing to protect the cabling in case any one of them has a short.

While the gauge of the existing stuff may be able to handle that, it presents a bad example for safety reasons, and could be a danger if one were to take the HF kit as a blueprint with their own larger 3-panel setup.

[bama35967]

wish I had read this

bought this 45 watt system from HF around christmas hooked up with small battery 30 ah to run 3 12 watt incondesent bulbs in chicken coops for 2 hrs a day operated with timer ..first battery ran down dead so tried again same thing dead battery in 3 days so thought battery not large enough so bought a 105 ah battery 8 days later dead ..so thought the system may need a ground rod to complete circut so looked here and what did I find ..yep the info I fhould have looked for befor buying ... oh well we live and learn

[bama35967]

now

I found a distibuter that will sell you a 50 Watt Poly-Crystaline panel, a 10 A charge controller, and all the wires for less than the HF kit. I won't post a link to it out of respect for the forum sponsor. The aim of this site was to save people that were considering the HF kit and provide quality kits to people that want to start small to learn more about solar.

Green

now you tell me !!! would like to find that distibuter

[bonaire]

Is this for heat or for light only?
Don't use incandescents off a small solar solution - use LEDs or CFLs as they draw less power. You'll need maybe a 200W solar panel for what you want to do. Someone else can comment on battery size. Like anything done right, it usually takes a 2nd attempt and 3x the cash.