Go Power Portable Solar System with Digital Solar Controller - 200 Watt Solar Panel

Video Transcript for Review of Go Power RV Solar Panels - Portable Solar Kit - 34282610

Hey everyone, I'm Ellen here at etrailer.com, and today we're going to be taking a look at the Go Power portable solar system with digital controller. Now this is going to be a great option if you're about to go out on an adventure, and you don't want to have your generator be your sole source of power, you don't want to have to rely on any shore power, you want to go off grid and off road. If you're worried about getting stranded out there without any kind of power, especially in the heat, this is a great way to make sure that your RV batteries, that we run a lot of accessories off of, are going to stay charged and working properly. So if you don't want to have to rely on your generator power, all of your stuff inside your RV, this is a great option, especially if you already have permanently mounted solar panels on the top of your RV, this is a way to extend your solar capacity. Especially if you're going out in sunny climates, solar is a great way to go.As far as what we have with this kit, it does come with a carrying case, which is what we're looking at right here. It has two zippers on either side to get that closed up, so we can easily protect our solar panels and keep them nice and safe, so I'm just going to undo this.

It does goes go all way around, I just can't quite reach that far. So you can see it's a semi-rigid, heavy duty nylon material, so we won't have to worry about any major damage happening to our solar panel while we store it away. The downside to a portable system is that you do have to set it up and take it down every time, but the benefit is, especially if you get an extension cable with this, you can actually place this away from your RV, so you can park your RV somewhere nice and shady, keep that cool, and then put this in a nice, sunny spot so you can get all the sun absorbed by your solar panel, power, everything and you're good to go.So if you're going to be moving around a lot, that is kind of one detractor, that you do have to set it up and take it down every time, but it's really not too bad. There's two legs on the inside that you just flip out, and then connect all your wires and everything, and that's really the hardest part, is just getting it all connected. But as far as how much this weighs, whenever I put it on the scale without any of the connectors, it was about 47 pounds.

The rated weighting is about 51 overall. So if you have all the cables and everything inside, it's about 50 pounds. Not super heavy, not super light, but moveable enough. This is the bigger panel that's offered by Go Power that's in the portable style. There's two others, one that's rated at 130 watts, and that's about 38 pounds.

And then another one that's about a 90 watt power rating, and that's a little bit smaller, about 25 pounds. So depending on your power that you need, you can make that decision there.But you notice I just undid these little clasps at the top of our panels, we have the spring loaded handle, so it flips down nice and easily whenever we want to store it away, but it gives you a nice gripping point to move around with and pick up our panels. So if I fold this all the way out, or a good portion of the way out, it does fold flat, but just for the sake of keeping this safe, I don't want to just slam it down on the table here. I'm just going to leave it like this.So these are all the cables that come with our kit. We'll have this two prong solar style SAE type cable, with the Anderson plug on the other side, that's the little gray portion.

So if you have an RV that's already solar capable, this will work with that. This is another solar power compatible plug here, this is the XLR cable. Again, going to the Anderson plug on the other side, which matches up to our monitor. There's a little gray tab coming off of that, that's where we would plug any of these accessories into. Then we'll have this long extension cable, so you can run this to the monitor and then to one of the other adapters. Now, as I think I mentioned earlier, there is a longer extension cable. The one that comes with it is going to be just 12 feet long, but if you want to get a 30 foot extension, you can find that here at etrailer.com, that part number is 34270356, so you can find that extension cable to give you even more length to play with.You can also connect this directly to a battery with these clamps, and let's switch over here. to a more permanent style that's going to have the ring terminals and a fuse in line. So a couple of different options as far as how to set this up. You can switch things out depending on the application. And then this monitor is going to help to keep our batteries from overcharging, so we don't have to worry about those getting too charged and then causing issues with performance from our batteries. This is compatible with just about any battery style out there. If you want to use lead acid, water-filled or flooded style batteries, AGC, and lithium, so you can run just about any kind of battery, and still maintain a good charge. So basically, this just helps us to stay out off the grid even longer with our solar panel.There's a little plug here that you can pull out, and there's actually an adapter to work with a USB directly, so if you want to plug in maybe a speaker somewhere a little bit further away from the RV, you can do that there, so that's one nice little option. And this monitor does flip out, so you can get a little easier access to things, and then it also shows you all the connections that are being made. So if there's ever any wiring issues, you can get those figured out there.Now the solar panel cells are a monocrystalline design, which is pretty much the top of the line, as far as efficiency and solar panels. Just really gingerly placing this, I don't want to slam it down. This is pretty sturdy, it's meant to withstand most things. It has this tempered glass on the top, so you shouldn't have to worry about anything getting into this and causing you any issues. Of course, you don't want to just drop it down or anything like that, but it should be able to take most small debris and things like that, so if a branch, full twig or something falls on it, it's not going to ruin the whole thing. And it is IP rated at IP67, so it means it's impervious to dust and it's pretty waterproof, although I think that that's really more for the cells themselves than the actual electrical connections to the back.So if you happen to run into kind of a sun shower, it starts suddenly pouring on you, you definitely want to unconnect everything. You should probably see the rain coming before it hits, but this isn't really intended to be to go through a flood or a downpour. If there's any clouds overhead though, you are going to have a big drop in the efficiency, since it still works whenever there's clouds in the sky, it's just going to drop that power efficiency down by about 75 to 90%, so something to keep in mind there. You always want to have it kind of pointed towards the sun, so if you can kind of track along with the sun as it's going through the sky, that's going to give you the best efficiency out of our panel, and that's true for just about any solar panel out there.Now, as far as the specific specs with this, it does work with 12 volt battery systems. It's rated at 200 watts. The amperage for the solar panel output is 11.43 amps. Our solar controller maximum input current is 30 amps. The maximum wire gauge that this comes with is a four. The cable length, as I mentioned before, is 12 feet long. Whenever we have this closed up, it's 39 and a half inches long by about 26 and a quarter inches wide. Whenever we open that out, it does go out to about 52 or 53 inches wide, and whenever it's folded up like this, it is going to be double thick, so that's about three inches deep. Whenever it's all the way folded out, that should be just about an inch and a half, or really at the thickest portion here, it's about two inches. The weight overall, again, about 50 pounds. We'll have a 25 year limited warranty on the panels, and then a five year warranty on the controller from Go Power.So overall, this is a really great system to extend the life, get you out and away from all the noise and bustle of the world, and keep you powered up without having a noisy, smelly generator. So I hope this video is helpful in deciding whether or not the Go Power portable solar system with digital controller is right for you. Thanks for watching.