Redarc Portable Solar Panel with Controller - 120 Watt Solar Panel

Video Transcript for Redarc Portable Solar Panel with Solar Charge Controller Review

What's up everybody, it's AJ with etrailer.com. Today we're gonna be checking out this REDARC 120 watt solar panel kit. Now this is a portable kit, so you can take it wherever you need. If you're off-grid camping, maybe you've got a camper or a rooftop tent, you can take this with you to make sure you're getting some power when you're not around any power to plug in, let's check it out. First up, we're gonna talk about the main part of this kit and that's gonna be the solar panel itself. It's gonna be monocrystalline, so usually when it comes to solar panels, there's monocrystalline, and polycrystalline.

Monocrystalline is a little more pricey, but it's more efficient. So, when you're off-grid camping, you wanna make the most out of the power you can get from that sun, so this is gonna be the way to go. Also has built in kickstands here in the back, you see we got it propped up right now because it is portable, you can set it out anywhere, also folds in on itself when you're not using it and condenses, that's really nice. Another thing is at peak efficiency and I mean, that's no clouds in the sky, full on sun contact, it has an output of six amps, but again, that's peak efficiency. Even right now, it's a pretty clear day out, you can see, and we have about 5.4, so, it's still close, and it's gonna do the job.

Next part of the kit we're gonna look at is gonna be the charge controller. Now you have to have this to hook up a solar panel to your battery, you can't do it without it, and it's because it's gonna take that power from that sun and it's gonna regulate that and make sure that it's safe for the battery use. So it's taken all that output from the sun and then regulating it so that goes into the battery and it can be used there, that way it's just safe on that battery and it doesn't cause any issues. Taking a little closer look at our charge controller, just wanna explain some things that, how it works. You've got the two LEDs right here, those are gonna be super helpful when you do hook it up to your battery letting you know what's going on.

So you can look at here and you've got the key here you can read of what's actually happening. So right now, we've got the solar panel one blinking and we look at our key, it says that means charging, so that's good, that means our battery's charging on our camper. And then you can look at this light here would be the battery, and that's just making sure that the battery is good and no issues with that, and not like, no overheating, or high voltage, or anything like that. So I like that it has the key right there, you can reference in, it's on there, it's pretty heavy duty too, it's not just a sticker so you can't just peel that up, so it's gonna stay on there. The other part down here is we've got the two Anderson connections.

So this is gonna be the battery output, So this one goes, this is where you plug in to the two outer layer clips to hook up to your battery, and this one's gonna be coming from the solar panel, this is the solar input and plugs in right there. Something else I want you to know about this is that if you we're to wanna double up your solar panels, you got two 120 watt ones, you get two of the exact same ones. You can get a splitter so you can run them in series or parallel, and you'd run that cord in here, you wanna make sure you check that charge controller 'cause that wouldn't work, that would convert, if you combine both of those solar panels at 120 watts, would be 12 amps, and this is only a 10 amp charge controller so you wouldn't be able to use those with this, you'd have to upgrade your charge controller. Now, ours isn't staying on our rig today, so I'm not gonna permanently mount it, but I did wanna show you how you would do that. You see the holes here on the side, you're gonna have two on each side and that's how you're gonna go ahead and attach this wherever you need it. Now you need it near your battery, so I think this will work really well if your battery was in the basement door so you could now it up in there, it does have an IP IP55 rating on there, so it's okay to be outside, but I'd want an inside close to that battery, that way we can just hook up those clips to the battery and you're good to go. Our option here on our rig today is the batteries on the outside, so we'd have to mount it to the outside of the rig right there and it would be exposed all the time, but we want it, we need it close to that battery so that's where we'd have to do it. Another solution there is though is that Go Power also makes solar panels and it has its charge controller, or its regulator, mounted to the back side of the solar panel itself. So it's built in that way you don't have to worry about mounting that anywhere, you just unfold it, set it out in the parking lot just like we did here, and just run one cable back to attach it. Looking at the battery, you can see the alligator clips hooked up. Really easy to attach them, just like normal jumper cables, you just attach them to the terminals. You got the positive which is red, the negative one here is black, it's even marked on your battery, so, you got to know which one's to hook it up to, we got our fuse in line two, so you don't have to worry about if there was some kind of feedback, or something it would blow that fuse that it wouldn't cause any damage to your stuff. I do like this option, there is another one though that is a ring terminal, that's more of the permanent option. I kinda wouldn't mind that 'cause then I can just attach it once, leave the cable here when I'm not using it, but this works too for portability. Like I said, if you're just pulling out there setting it up, it's easy enough to clamp those on, setup your solar panel , get on with your day. Next thing to think about is battery compatibility. So it's not gonna work with lithium-ion batteries, if you have one of those, I would look at the Go Power Solar Panel we talked about earlier, those do work with those. What these work with is gonna be AGM, calcium, and lead-acid, it's hooked up to our lead-acid today, so it's gonna work just fine with that. Now there's a little bit of a catch for that. So out of the box, it works with AGM batteries, but where you're gonna have to get for the other two options, the calcium and the lead-acid, so you're going to get the remote controller here. The remote display plugs in right here to our regulator, and then it's gonna be a monitor that is gonna allow you to change the battery profile. So we had to get this, plug it in, and change it from AGM to lead-acid so it would work with this battery. Now this is sold separately so make sure you pick one of these up if you do need to switch over to the other battery types. Another thing is, it's gonna monitor the battery and let you know how it's doing during this charging process too. Even if you don't need to change the battery profile, I would recommend getting it, it's nice to see all those readouts on there, so for instance, the one I want to focus on is the amps charge. Right now it's at about 5.0, and so I can change that just by stepping in front of the solar panel. And before when we did this, it dropped somewhere around 0.4, so that's quite a bit less. So just letting you know that if you are setting this up on a kind of cloudy day, or you just wanna make sure you're getting the maximum use out of the sun, you can look at that readout and see, "Oh wait, I'm not getting as much as I could, let me point a different direction." And as I walk away, you can see it goes right back up, letting you know that you're getting a better charge. The cable included for the solar panel is 16 feet long, so this is the as much travels you get with it, we got it fully extended here. It's nice because if we are kind of parked in the shadows, we couldn't put it right there on the side, we can still put it up front, but if we needed to go a little further out, we could point it right at that sun. Now, if you need more than that, there is another extension cable that's 32 feet, so you can pick that one up on our website too. And when you're done with it, you can fold it up, it all fits in its own carrying case, it comes with this. It's got the built in handle on the solar panels when they come together, so I like that. There's even a pouch on this side for the regulator and extra cables, so I like that it's all condensed and in the same spot that way you can't lose the cables when you need to go set this up. It's all gonna be in the same spot, and you can just throw it in your basement door. Now, it's really easy to set up too and we're gonna go through that process right now. So first, I would go ahead and open this pouch, and let's unload our cables and regulator and just set them aside because I don't want to unzip this and just have it fall and hit the ground. So I'll just set those aside so that now I can unzip it on both sides, I can just let it fall down. Go ahead and set the case aside, and now we'll unfold our solar panel. So just coming here at the handle, separate it, and then we're gonna put out the stands, so let me set it down. Prop those out, just like that. So, just show you just how I did it when you weren't around here. So, just pop it out there, it stays in there, does have a catch, so I like that, that they stay in place, they don't just go around, so get those out just like that. Now we'll lean back our solar panel right there. Now we get back to our battery and we're gonna go ahead and hook up the alligator clips, positive to positive, negative to negative, right there. Then we'll take our regulator, our charge controller as well, plug it into the battery output. You always make sure you hook up the battery first and then we'll hook up our solar panel. There's an Anderson connection underneath the solar panel, so we'll just take our extension that came with it, plug that in, and then come back to our charge controller, and plugging it to the solar input. Just like that, you're all hooked up, I'm trying to put it in the shade so you can see the lights. We got green light for the battery, and the blinking light on the solar panel means it's getting the charge to that battery. Overall, real light, the solar panel, I think it's gonna to work really good with the rig especially if you go off the grid and you just need a little bit of power when you're not around a power source, think this is a good option for you to help you out with that battery. Now, another thing that kinda, I didn't like at first was having that extra controller put in there just to see that monitor, that way you could switch it over. If you have an AGM battery, it's not really a problem for you, you don't have to worry about it, but if you have a calcium or lead-acid battery, you're gonna need that to switch over the battery profile. Didn't like that at first, but actually, the monitor is kind of nice to have. Like I said earlier, when you can see the amps on there and see what, how max you're getting, and then you can adjust your solar panel. I like having that data that way I can make sure I get the most out of the solar panel when I am using it. So I kind of circled back around that and don't mind that as much just because it is helpful tool to have when you're setting this up. Well, I think that about does it, thanks for hanging out, and I hope this helped..