500 Watt Solar Charge Controller

You go walking into your local HF store and you will find the Thunderbolt Magnum charge controller going for $79.00. To be honest $79.00 is a little steep for a basic controller with a LCD. The info that the LCD provides is pretty basic. Giving you the volt status of your batteries and amps coming in or going out depending if your using the load terminals on the controller. The good news is that on Amazon you can find real good deals on this exact same controller. I bought 2 within a week. The first one I purchased was $42.00 including shipping. The second one was $29.99 including free shipping. Prices do seem to fluctuate on Amazon a lot depending on the vendor. The bottom line is that I bought 2 for the price of 1 at HF. Now for the price I paid, this is a very good controller. Controllers in the $30.00 to $40.00 price range give you LED status, charging, charged, etc. If you want digital info it requires using a multimeter. This will do everything that a basic controller will do and provide you with good basic info on the LCD. For $30.00 this controller is a steal and for $40.00 a very good buy.....

The picture shows a connection cord. I needed that part as well. Thats why i bought it! Description doesn't say "not included. " NOT HAPPY!

We've had this in operation for 2 years at our ocean property and it has worked flawlessly. Very inexpensive for what it does.

Defective.

I install solar out in Hawaii, we had a bunch of small modules we weren't using so I wanted to do something with them. I made a solar generator with two 75 watt modules and bought this controller for a 35ah deep cycle battery. Works really well, no issues, only wish the LCD was backlit. Anyway, for the price and the size it handles, it's definitely worth it. Also, if you're mounting a charge controller inside of something, it's not great for being an internal charger, you'll need it on the outside of whatever you're creating. Nit picking aside, I definitely recommend it.

This item works very well. A good price for a good product...I am very happy with the product and would recommend it.

This device is a good cheap battery controller which its main benefit is a display of battery volts,solar amps and load amps.just a cheap way to get into solar.or battery regulation.I'm not sure I trust this to run my wholesystem when I get pass the hobby or small system phase.the more you read up on these battery controllers the better idea is an MPPT controller probably with a display so you can buy those much cheaper 30v panels for.55-.95/watt from retailers on Web with better quality and run those with a higher degree of power collecting and management.this unit is handy but will just help point the direction in which you should go.you would probably be glad per say to buy a30amp Coleman unit or just a little more for a well similarratedsimilar unit.but this is handy on a smaller level for the price.it seems I have had to start the load by pressing the load button more than once but I don't even have to run the load connected to the charge controller.learning and experimenting is part of the benefit of this handy little unit bought for around$20 .it's also good just as a meter.

I got this product back in July 2014. I like it. Still seems to do what I expected for my micro solar system. Knowing what I know now, I'd of bought this 500 watt instead of the 10 watt when I started out. Room to add more panels. LOL.