Nobody use one?

My dad uses it on his boat and it works great. He never has a dead battery from sitting at the dock and using all his toys.

I'll buy one tomorrow.
The only problem I can see from going to the website, is that the very smallest ones are not waterproof. They are meant to sit on a dashboard. I plan on just bungeeing it on the flat area of the seat on top of the cover. Maybee I can just seal it up with some silicone. For 10 bucks or so, what's to loose.

Turns out the one they show on the Sunforce website isn't the one at Canadian Tire.
This one is the "Power sports" model and claims to be fully waterproof. So it's not the issue first thought.

I grabbed 2 today. For the boat and Sea-Doo.
I'm actually pretty impressed with it, I looks not at all cheap. And with all the wire, plugs etc. it's surely a great deal for 8 bucks! It claims 1watt or 80mA in direct sun.
We'll see.

Ed M wrote:

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I'm using the power of a bigger panel right now to type this message

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Care to elaborate? Are you a solar guru? I'm working on setting up solar at the cabin this summer. I would have taken it out there when I went on the weekend but I kept it at home. I figure if the power goes out here during the flood I will hook it up to run a  couple of lights at night. No need to run a generator just for a few lights.

I have 60 watts here and another 30 will go together with that at the cabin.

 

I'm actually hoping when this flood hits that I will have some days off. If so, I want to get the solar all hooked up and try it out. See how much I can run with 60 watts. I bought two 6 volt deep cycle batteries to run off. I am thinking as long as we are a little bit careful with it, that should easily power what we need at the cabin. Fridge, curling iron (not mine!) and stove are propane, microwave will have to run off the generator so it's mostly lights is all it needs to run.

How long can you run a computer off the battery when you charge it with the 80 watt panel?

Mark, sorry, I've successfully derailed another thread on Canadian Poncho. Should we move this to a new thread?

Carl Stevenson wrote:

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Care to elaborate? Are you a solar guru? I'm working on setting up solar at the cabin this summer. I would have taken it out there when I went on the weekend but I kept it at home. I figure if the power goes out here during the flood I will hook it up to run a  couple of lights at night. No need to run a generator just for a few lights.

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Carl,
Remember to use energy saver globes.  In my small office I use 7 watt and in larger rooms from 7-11 watt globes.  Major reduction in consumption.

 

It takes a few hours to drop the battery from 12.8 volts to 12.1 volts with my computer, I should get a Killawatt meter to figure how much power it consumes. 1 full sunny day will charge it up to full again, I think the charge controller should charge until about 13.5 volts, but it stops at 12.8?

I want to get 2 for my boat this summer. I will need larger ones though. To run a small fan in the cabin, and trickle charge the batteries. There is a lot of sunshine hours along the shore of Lake Erie in the summer. We have solar lights in our gazebo that are OK for short term.

-- Edited by eeluddy on Wednesday 1st of April 2009 07:40:12 PM