etrailer Solar Charging System with Digital Solar Controller - 390 Watt Solar Panels

Video Transcript for Let’s Check Out the etrailer Solar Charging System with Digital Solar Controller

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, these two 195-watt monocrystalline solar panels are going to convert the sun's energy into DC electricity, charging your battery in your RV so that you can power your devices that are connected to your batteries. This kit does include two 195-watt panels for a total of 390 watts, so each panel is going to give you a maximum output current of 10.7 amps and a short circuit current of 11.4 amps. Now, finding the right solar package for your particular application, as you probably have been finding out, can be daunting. Answering questions related to wattage or amp hours or the size of panels that you need or conversion formulas can be a confusing task indeed, but I'm happy to say that we have taken all that hard work out of the way for you so you can easily find the system that's going to work best for you.

On your screen, I am including our link to our solar calculator here at etrailer.com. All you have to do is answer a few questions on that calculator and you're gonna be able to find the solar package that's going to work best for your particular application. So just take that link and put it in your browser and that'll take you to our solar calculator, answer some questions, and you're gonna be able to find the solar package system that's going to work best for your RV or camper. Now these panels are designed for a fixed mount installation on your RVs, on your vans, and more. Each panel weighs a little over 23 pounds.

They do 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. Let's talk about some measurements. Looking at the overall length of each of the panels, we're about 55 1/2 inches long, the overall width about 27 11/16th inches wide, and the thickness about 1 3/16th 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 to accommodate both of these panels. And you do wanna make sure that you position these panels in a place or on a place on your roof that's not going to get consistent shadows like from your air conditioner unit or other things that you might have on your roof.

If you have shadows on these panels, as you probably know, that's going to diminish or reduce their effectiveness. Now this does include Z brackets and hardware to install the the panels to the brackets and the brackets to the roof of your RV or camper. I did want to show you that on each of our Z brackets here, butyl tape is already applied to the bracket. So when you begin to drive your screws through the brackets there, that butyl tape is gonna do a great job of keeping moisture, keeping water from going in through those holes that you're making with the screws. But I do also recommend picking up some self-leveling sealant to go on top of the holes there on those brackets, that's gonna give you an extra layer of protection from water, from moisture, so you're not gonna have to worry about water seeping in through the holes there from the screws through the brackets, getting in through your roof and maybe getting into your ceiling and possibly causing mold and mildew.

So, definitely pick up some self-leveling sealant if you don't already have some. So, again, you're gonna get the brackets, you're gonna get the hardware, and this is going to connect to your system with the MC4 connectors that are on the back of each of these panels. Let me turn this one around. Hopefully you can see there we do have cabling here, and we have our connectors here, and these cables are about three feet long. And then you're also going to get two MC4 branch connectors that are going to allow you to connect these panels in series. So it should be very easy to get these connected and plugged into place. And then I wanted to show you a closeup of the included controller here. This is a 30-amp solar controller. It's going to prevent harmful overcharging of your RV batteries. It monitors and adjust output from your solar panels. And so this is going to work with your 12-volt, 24-volt, 36-volt and 48-volt battery and solar systems. This is gonna work with your sealed gel, AGM, flooded lead acid, and lithium iron phosphate batteries. And this does feature a digital PWM, or pulse-width modulation technology. It's gonna regulate panel output to provide a consistent charge. The automatic multi-stage charging switches modes as the battery charges. That's going to help extend the life of your batteries. And this also includes presets, preset charging profiles rather, for sealed gel, AGM, flooded, and lithium batteries. Now, I'm gonna put on your screen some other bits of information that you might find helpful. And as you probably already saw here, we do have a really nice, pretty large display, so you're gonna be able to easily see what's going on. You're gonna be able to easily monitor the charge and discharge currents. It is backlit so you're gonna be able to see it in low light or dark conditions. And 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. The overall width of our panel is about 7 13/16 inches wide, four inches tall, and about two inches thick. So this is going to include the wiring that you are going to need as well. You're gonna get red and black wiring with ring terminals and the red and black wiring with the MC4 connectors. By the way, each of those wires measure about seven and a half meters long. And, again, all the mounting hardware that you're going to need. This does have a limited lifetime warranty and we do, I did wanna also mention that we do also offer similar kits. If you don't need two panels, we do have a kit with just one panel that's 195 watts. And then we have another kit with three 195-watt panels. So, whichever is going to work best for you. We also have smaller solar panels as well. So again, avail yourself to our solar calculator. Let that calculator figure out exactly what you need for your rig and then pick up exactly what you need here from etrailer.com. Well, I think it's gonna wrap up our look today. I do hope that our time together was helpful for you. Again, my name is Andy. Thank you for joining me.