Nature Power 6 Watt Solar Battery Trickle Charger

I bought this for a dear friend that I horse camp with on a regular bases. We discovered that it will keep an already charged battery charged but won't charge a drained battery. So food for thought is to be sure and have a fully charged battery when heading out and then have that to keep the battery charged up.I love the idea to use natural energy!!!

With two vehicles and 12 miles per week to the train station, one of my vehicles sits idle for a while. I have had batteries self-discharge in one of the vehicles over a few months, so I tried this solar charger. Within a few minutes of hooking it up to the (permanently powered) accessory socket, I noticed the battery voltage immediately start to rise several hundredths of a volt - late in the afternoon on a Fall day with the Sun below the trees but the sky clear and bright. A few days later, the voltage was up to a very comfortable level. A little boost will preserve this vehicle's 10 year old battery without overcharging it. I have the panel sitting inside the vehicle in the front passenger window facing south-south west at about a 20 degree angle to vertical in a location open to the sky. Not the precise optimum position, but good enough to produce a charging current most of the day.One thing you should note: the solar panel is directly connected to the power cord - there is no blocking diode or regulator. With a 6 watt panel, the voltage isn't high enough or the current so high that the battery will overcharge, but at night or on overcast or rainy days, the battery could discharge through the solar panel. A $1 1N4001 diode fits nicely inside the terminal cover and can easily be soldered in series with the wires to block the battery from discharging without much voltage drop. A 1N4001 has a 1 A current rating, which is file for a panel that puts out about 1/2 A, but a 1N4002 or larger diode will work just as well.

I picked this product over all the others in the class because of it's aluminum frame. You'll find at least one review for each of the plastic frame versions where the plastic has melted or warped. I experienced this myself on a H****r F*****t dash charger on it's first slightly warm day. This item does have plastic in the corners, but I'm hoping that's just to protect from sharp edges and not structural. Mind you, it still gets crazy hot in the dash.I got this bigger panel to use both as a maintainer and a charger. It's for an SUV that doesn't get driven very often, so this charger will sit in the dash full time to maintain the battery. When the SUV does get driven, it's often for camping trips and I want to be able to charge small electronic items from the car without worry that I'm running the battery down. The weatherproof feature of this panel will come in handy for that since I can leave it out for maximum sun exposure.As for performance, with a fully charged battery on a mostly sunny day, the panel seems to be overcoming the vehicle's idle current draw and pushing an extra 80-100mA into the battery. I measured this at the battery with a multimeter with the panel behind the vehicle windshield. If I switch to measuring from the panel and turn the headlights on, I can see the current from the panel increase a bit as the vehicle battery drops from 100%. That all seems like it's working correctly to me, I won't try to judge whether it's actually capable of the advertised power.

I bought two of these to use with a UTV and Mower that I keep in a barn with no power. I hooked them up and left for two weeks and when I returned both batteries were dead. One of the batteries was only 1 week old. The item does not come with instructions even though none were really needed. I would not waste my money on these chargers.

This is perfect. I started car pooling with my roommate to work so my truck has just been sitting around for like 3 months I try and go out and turn it on every week and run it for about 30 minutes. Either way the battery was discharging due to lack of use. I got this and it maintains my battery level just perfect, It will not charge your battery if it's completely dead it's pretty much just to maintain it's charge.One thing to note; this unit had aluminum borders that get hot as heck in the Texas sun. Just watch yourself, it's pretty hot out here.

The product arrived, I connected it, but observed reverse DC feedback to the panel at night which suggested that a BLOCKING DIODE was not in place. I contacted the distributer and got a.....mumbo jumbo explanation. Since I have advanced electronics skills, I added a suitable blocking diode (inside the little black box on its bottom side.) Now....no more reverse DC back to the panel.

Received this product with one corner protector broken off. We will try to super glue it. Other than that, it seems to be a good quality product.

Bought this for my vehicle that doesn't get driven a lot. We were always having problems with the battery going dead. This sits in the window and plugs into the ac adapter, and since we've had it hooked up we haven't had a dead battery. I would reccomend this to anyone who has an infrequently used vehicle.

Won't keep my battery charged. Built well enough except for the extremely cheap, toy like alligator clips. They fell apart after a few uses. 6 watts just not enough power to keep your battery charged. I should of researched these a bit more. My fault.I found out afterwards that a lot of reviews for this particular item can be found, verbatim, including buyers, for other makes, and models of these units. ( ??????? )

There is quite a bit of discussion out there re: solar panels and their ability to make use of the rays from fluorescent lighting. Are there rays, are there enough rays, how much of the light, how strong, the type of solar panel, blah blah. This was purported to be sensitive enough, so I thought hey why not. I stuck it on the front dash of my westfalia campervan about 5' from a set of bar fluorescent tube lights above it the first week of November '13. Yesterday I went to take my baby out of storage and was really surprised to discover the dash clock ticking away. I certainly wasn't counting on it- I brought a battery boost pack with me- and didn't need it at all. I turned the key a few times to power the fuel pump, then a full turn.. rerr-rerr-rerr-vroom! Barely any time at all, she springs to life. Impressed! There is definitely no natural light where she was parked, so it was all fluorescent.

Works well. You definitely need full sun and it does take a while to charge things, but we leave it on a trickle charge for our marine battery to take out the trolling engine on our small aluminum boat and it works great.

So far working well and no battery top up necessary like before if i had not used it in a week or so, ATV starts straight away easy to connect and detatch.

Pas vraiment essayé encore , mais l'ensemble est complet et devrait faire l'affaire.