I'm trying to see just how much of my daily power requirements can be serviced with just solar charged batteries. I really don't need too much outside of what MUST be run by my gennie - a TT AC and possibly a microwave although I don't use one much even at the house. Perhaps a my big coffee maker which pulls 900 w. Anyway, yesterday I tested out charging the power pack with the flex panels with the pack at 37%. The real interest here was to see how much line loss was going to be w a 25' extension cable w SAE to SAE connectors I bought to give me more flexibility in remoting the panels. Started at 12:15 and initially hooked up the 6' cable to get a baseline charging wattage which was between 58 and 62 watts with SWAG'd angle and orientation. Nowhere near the advertised 100 watts but I don't expect them to produce anywhere near that unless everything is perfect.
Next, I hooked up the 25' and the wattage dropped to between 52 and 54 watts so there's between 6 and 8 watts difference between using the two. As long as there's time and sun I don't mind the drop in wattage since it's really nice to have that extra length. I had set up the panels on my zero grav lounger to make it easy to adjust the angle and I thought it worked pretty well! Stretched a bungee cord between the arm rests to act as a footer and then used a couple of WM clamps to hold it in place. An old broom stick acted as the spine to keep it flattened out and to help adjust the angle.
Obviously had to keep moving the contraption to keep up w the sun but by 3:00 pm it was at 99% charge and when I came back from a beer run (out of suds) 15 min later, it was fully charged and the pack automatically shut down. I really like this GOLAB and it has shown that it will run my empty 45qt 12v refer for well over 40 hours at between 38 and 40 degrees w no problems. Full, I'll bet it will run it ~ 48 hours. The GOLAB is still on sale at 100 bucks off w coupon so I used a little more of my stimulation and bought another arriving today.
That way I have ~ 96 hours of endurance for what I use most, up to and including the refer by alternating charging with the flex panels. That's a pretty good amount of flexibility without having to deploy the bug system. My next test will be with the MC4 to SAE cables to attach one of my glass 100w panels to the pack and see how that performs. After that, I'll test out the 20a CC which I got to replace the 10a which came with the pack but is widely reviewed as inadequate for the job.
Cheers!
