I do understand electronics and how these things work. For my curiosity I purchased one of these and opened it to verify the design. From my observations I found that it is a very basic 'Linear' charge controller design to prevent Lead Acid batteries from getting overcharged & severely undercharged. Nothing more nothing less.
It does work as advertised and your costly lead acid batteries do not get 'boiled' from prolonged charging in strong sunlight as the circuit merely shuts off power flowing to the battery once it reaches the cut off preset of +14.2 vDC. It then waits there illuminating the 'Green LED' till the battery voltage drops to below 13v and the cycle repeats. It does not have enough brains to 'trickle' charge at a 'float' charge level after the initial bulk absorption phase has completed. Therefore lead acid batteries that have SOC more than 80% Especially the ones that do not have any phantom loads and do not get used that often may not get fully charged with this basic design. In reality you are actually losing ton of Solar Power going nowhere using this basic ON/OFF switch sort of design.
It however does have beefier QTY 3 Blocking diodes in ''parallel'' on the + VE bus line to have lower forward resistance? when the charge controller delivers power to the battery. This seems like a good idea for delivering whatever the solar panel has to offer to the connected battery minimizing loss, But as they are not thermally coupled I do have some concerns about thermal rundowns on one of the diodes in extreme situations. That explains why certain people have had their controllers blow up for no reason. - Makes sense?
On the plus side, When these work, These Blocking diodes prevents any current from flowing back into the solar panel at night and does not drain the battery when left alone unused. This also prevents any damage from back-feeding voltages getting into the solar panel itself thereby protecting it from accidental abuse of reverse polarity. This also explains why the charge controller works only when there is Sunlight falling on the panel as it uses 'Solar' input voltage to illuminate the LEDs. You cannot view the state of charge (SOC) of your 12v Battery even if it is fully charged - until a partial sun shines on the solar panel! to activate the circuit.
Bottom-line: For the price you pay you do get a 'basic' charge controller that may suffice certain installations that are rated to use 100w or less Solar panel capacity & for batteries with need for low amps for charging but for real utilization of your precious Solar energy and storing them into your Lead acid batteries you need to invest little bit more and get a 3 stage Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) Solar charge controllers.
It does work as advertised and your costly lead acid batteries do not get 'boiled' from prolonged charging in strong sunlight as the circuit merely shuts off power flowing to the battery once it reaches the cut off preset of +14.2 vDC. It then waits there illuminating the 'Green LED' till the battery voltage drops to below 13v and the cycle repeats. It does not have enough brains to 'trickle' charge at a 'float' charge level after the initial bulk absorption phase has completed. Therefore lead acid batteries that have SOC more than 80% Especially the ones that do not have any phantom loads and do not get used that often may not get fully charged with this basic design. In reality you are actually losing ton of Solar Power going nowhere using this basic ON/OFF switch sort of design.
It however does have beefier QTY 3 Blocking diodes in ''parallel'' on the + VE bus line to have lower forward resistance? when the charge controller delivers power to the battery. This seems like a good idea for delivering whatever the solar panel has to offer to the connected battery minimizing loss, But as they are not thermally coupled I do have some concerns about thermal rundowns on one of the diodes in extreme situations. That explains why certain people have had their controllers blow up for no reason. - Makes sense?
On the plus side, When these work, These Blocking diodes prevents any current from flowing back into the solar panel at night and does not drain the battery when left alone unused. This also prevents any damage from back-feeding voltages getting into the solar panel itself thereby protecting it from accidental abuse of reverse polarity. This also explains why the charge controller works only when there is Sunlight falling on the panel as it uses 'Solar' input voltage to illuminate the LEDs. You cannot view the state of charge (SOC) of your 12v Battery even if it is fully charged - until a partial sun shines on the solar panel! to activate the circuit.
Bottom-line: For the price you pay you do get a 'basic' charge controller that may suffice certain installations that are rated to use 100w or less Solar panel capacity & for batteries with need for low amps for charging but for real utilization of your precious Solar energy and storing them into your Lead acid batteries you need to invest little bit more and get a 3 stage Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) Solar charge controllers.
You can get on of these from Amazon by using the link below:
Three stars! from me. Thanks for reading my review!
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