etrailer Solar Charging System with Digital Solar Controller - 100 Watt Solar Panel

Video Transcript for etrailer Solar Charging System with Digital Solar Controller Review

Hi, everybody. Andy here with etrailer.com. Let's take a look together at this etrailer Solar Charging System with Digital Solar Charge Controller. Now, this 100-watt monocrystalline solar panel is going to convert the sun's energy into DC electricity and that electricity is going to charge your battery in your RV and power your devices that are connected to your battery. Now again, this is a 100-watt panel and it's going to give you a maximum output current of 4.8 amps, and a short-circuit current of 5.1 amps. Now as you might know, finding the solar package that's going to work best for your particular setup can be stressful, with questions about wattage and amp hours and panel dimensions, and more questions that you might have that you don't have answers for.

Well, I'm happy to say that we here at etrailer.com have really done a lot of the hard work for you with our solar calculator. On your screen, I am including our link to our solar calculator to help you find just what you need for your particular setup. All you have to do is answer a few questions and then our calculator is going to do the rest, pointing you to a solar package that's going to work best for you. Now, this lightweight panel is designed for a fixed mount installation on RVs, vans, and more. This weighs only about 13 1/2 pounds, so it's really not going to add a whole lot of weight to your roof.

It does feature a tempered glass coating and a black aluminum frame that's going to do a great job of withstanding harsh road and weather conditions. Now, let me give you some measurements. Looking at the overall length of our panel, we're sitting at about 42 1/8 inches long. The overall width, about 21 1/8 inches wide, and then the thickness, about 1 3/16 inches thick. So, you are going to need to make sure that you have a spot on the roof of your RV that's going to be big enough for this to be mounted, and you also want to keep in mind that you wanna stay away from air conditioning units or anything that could potentially cast a shadow on this panel that would reduce its effectiveness.

As you can see, we do have hardware that is included with this panel to help you get this mounted into place. I wanted to point out you do get four of these Z brackets and the Z brackets include butyl tape on each of them, so that's a great addition to these brackets. Again, you're going to get the mounting hardware as well. I do recommend picking up some self-leveling sealants. That sealant will create an additional seal over the holes that you're going to be making in your roof through these brackets.

So, that sealant is going to make sure, along with the butyl tape that's included on those brackets, that you're not gonna get any moisture into the ceiling of your RV or camper. You won't have to worry about mold, mildew, that sort of thing. Now, this is going to connect to your system with MC4 connectors. So, let me go ahead and flip this around and show you those connectors. So on the backside here, you can see we have these MC4 connectors and these cables, I do have them bundled up just to conserve some space here. Those are just about three feet long, but we do carry extension cables if you are needing more length. So, this is going to be basically a plug-and-play procedure. And so, let me go ahead and flip this around and talk about the controller that's also included with this kit. So, I'm gonna go ahead and center this so you can see it there. Now, at the front of my table here, taking a closer look, we do have this 30-amp solar controller that's going to prevent your batteries from overcharging. This is going to monitor and adjust the output from your solar panels, and this 30-amp solar controller is going to work with your 12-volt, 24-volt, 36-volt, and 48-volt battery and solar systems. This is going to work with sealed/gel, AGM, flooded lead acid, and lithium iron phosphate batteries. And this controller does feature the digital PWM or pulse width modulation technology that's going to regulate panel output to provide a consistent charge. The automatic multi-stage charging switches modes as the battery charges. That's gonna help extend your battery life. And this includes preset charging profiles for sealed/gel, AGM, flooded, and lithium batteries. Now, some other bits of information that might be of interest to you is the maximum solar array current, again, is 30 amps. This is a 30-amp controller. The maximum solar panel input voltage is 100 volts. And then the maximum solar array input power for your 12-volt battery system is gonna be 390 watts. Then, 24-volt is gonna be 780 watts. For 36-volt, it's gonna be 1,170 watts. And then for your 48-volt, it's gonna be 1,560 watts. As you probably saw, we do have a digital display here. It's a pretty large display. I think it's gonna be very easy to read. It is backlit and so, you're gonna be able to see your charge and discharge currents. As you probably already noticed, we do have four USB-A ports, two on each side, that's gonna let you charge your devices while the solar panels are generating power. And just some overall measurements just so you have a good idea of the size of this panel. The overall width from end to end, we're about 7 13/16 inches wide. The overall height, about four inches tall. And the overall thickness, about two inches deep. And so, this kit does include everything that you see here on my table before me. Let me go back out for another wide view. So, you're gonna get this one 100-watt panel. Again, the hardware to install the panel. And then, you are going to get our 30-amp controller. And then, you're also going to get the wiring as well. You're going to get a black wire and red wire with the MC4 connectors, and then red and black wire with the ring terminals. By the way, the wire measures about 7 1/2 meters long. And this does have a limited lifetime warranty. One other thing I wanted to mention, again, this is just going to be, this kit's just going to include this one panel, but we do have another kit that includes three 100-watt panels if you're interested in more power. So, you can find that here at etrailer.com. Everything will be the same except you will get two additional 100-watt panels. Well, I think that's gonna wrap up our look today. I do hope that it was helpful for you. Again, my name is Andy. Thank you for joining me.