Video of OptiMate Solar Duo Solar Charging System with Controller - 20 Watt Solar Panel
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Video Transcript for Review of OptiMate RV Solar Panels - Roof Mounted 20 Watt Solar Kit - MA79JR
Hi there, I'm Michael with etrailer.com. Today, we're gonna take a quick look at this OptiMate Solar Duo Solar Charging System. This system is going to include this 20 watt, polycrystalline solar panel that uses sunlight to provide an off-grid charging solution for your lead acid and lithium batteries. This will permanently attach to your RV or trailer or whatever it is that you're wanting to get charged up with the corner mounting brackets here. The hardware to get this installed is not included, but you should be able to just use a few screws to get this held down in place. This way you can park with the solar panel in the general direction of the sun, that's gonna help charge up your battery.
This is made with weatherproof materials that will stand up to the elements. It's got a IP rating of 54, so it will do a good job of holding up to a lots of water and dust and that sort of thing. This will work for your 12 volt batteries from 2 to 240 amp-hours, whether they're Flooded, AGM, Gel or Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries. This is gonna do a good job of helping to charge those up. As far as our dimensions go, this is right at 17 and 7/8 of an inch tall by approximately 14 and a quarter of an inch wide.
And only about 1 inch deep. The panel will connect using the SAE connection here. This is going to plug right into your solar controller. Your controller is going to adjust your solar panel output for a quick, consistent charge. It's going to automatically have, charge your system using a multi-stage charging system that will allow your battery to have an extended life.
You can see it does have an LED display here. It's gonna provide the charging progress and monitors your charging level throughout the night. And the controller input voltage is capable of 15 to 22 volts. So it is gonna do a good job for you. The duo methods smart charging system helps to efficiently charge the battery in any weather.
So not just in the bright sunlight, but it's also going to provide a pulse charge of 3 to 5 amps in low light as well. So it's gonna help to protect your battery. It's gonna even help save your dead batteries from as low as 4 volts. And so this will then plug into your solar panel and then that will plug into your connection with the SAE fitting there. So you've got 2 different ways of connecting to your battery. You've got these alligator clamps for more of a temporary connection. So you can just hook those up to your posts. If you want a temporary connection, or you've got these ring terminals here. And if you want to have a more permanent connection, get those attached to your posts. And then this can just stay attached to that battery and plug in whenever you get where you're going, get set up in the sunlight. You can see it's got holes there, slot for zip ties to hold this in place and a fuse there, 15 amp fuse to help protect from any electrical issues. So overall, a really nice option, gives you a couple of different ways, a permanent or more of a temporary option, to get everything plugged in. All right, your cable length from your solar panel here. It's about 80 inches. Your charge controllers, about 40 inches, and then both your ring terminals and your battery clamps are both 20 inches. So it should give you a decent amount of length to reach out to your battery from where you have this mounted. So overall impressions, polycarbonate or the polypropylene, polycrystalline construction is decent. It's definitely not the high end of the materials for making solar panels. Your monocrystalline is more premium kind of product. It's just a little bit more efficient than the polycrystalline. So keep that in mind, if you are looking for the most premium product, we do have other options available for you, but if you're just looking for something that's gonna do a decent job with helping to trickle charge your battery when you're off grid, I think this is gonna be a great option for you. With this being the size that it is. I'm kind of surprised that it's not more portable. We do have lots of portable options available here at etrailer.com, but the benefit of a portable solar panel is that you can move it to where the sun is shining. So you don't have to be parked in the sun, getting hot yourself. You can just leave the panel out in the open where the sun's gonna hit it. But with this, it is designed to be permanently installed. So you would have to park where the sun is. So something to keep in mind there. It is pretty lightweight. So you could in theory, use it as a portable option, but there are others that are more designed for that with kick stands and that sort of thing to help keep them angled up to receive the sun. But overall, if you're just looking for a basic option to help trickle charge your battery, I think this will be a good job for you. So that's gonna complete our look for today. Again, I'm Michael with etrailer.com. Thanks for watching..
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