I think this is a good deal based on it is foldable and light weight, but don't know this is enough to run a fridge freezer during the day and the same time charge the battery for the night. Questions for experts….
40W Solar Panel Kit $169 at ALDI
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lightweight for 2.4 kilograms ?
don't know this is enough to run a fridge freezer during the day and the same time charge the battery for the night.
What battery? There's no batteries included.
I think he means if the fridge has a built in battery
most don't, they rely on external batteries, or stupidly expensive add-on batteries.
DJ, I don't know why you've been negged. That seems to be the case with most fridges.
I think he means charge a 12V battery to provide power overnight to the previously mentioned fridge/freezer. It's not exactly a well-written deal, OP :-)
Nope, even small fridge/freezers will be drawing upwards of 60 or 70 watts. and $169 isnt a good deal for a 40W solar panel kit, folding or not. Not really a good deal mate.
so a reason for the comment negs, anyone ?????
You negged the deal because Op said something about a fridge.
If you're gonna neg a deal, you've gotta provide evidence for that neg.
Fair call, neg revoked. Maybe it comes withf ree wi-fi, that would be a deal :-) :-)
Well said SydBargainer. For it's class, this seems like a quality product for the price with Bosh Panels. For the people who have some idea what their looking at, and keep within realistic expectations, they will get good value and hopefully use out of this product.
:-) Can I revoke my comment negs? Can't seem to figure it out.
I don't think you can revoke comment negs. Happy to be shown different though, I have never worked that out either.
@ozhunter68: Click on votes under the comment, next to your name should be a red circle with a negative in it which revoked your comment vote. I don't think you can re-vote on a revoked comment though.
Our 'large' fridge uses ~100W. But that's only while it's doing it's job. It idles at ~0W the rest of the time. If you charged a battery from this solar cell, it's likely you would have enough power to run a fridge?
It greatly depends on your usage patterns. That will affect how often does it needs to "do it's job" i.e. how long does it spend drawing 100W ? It will vary dramatically based on temperature, insulation, how often you open it.
If it's in Canberra in the middle of winter, and you dont open it, the fridge might only run for a few minutes every hour. If you're in Northern WA, Darwin etc during a summer, and open it 6 times a day, it might run for 45 minutes every hour.
How big a battery, what is the starting charge of the battery, etc. etc. How often do you open the fridge ?
I can confidently say, if it's a hot day, a 40W panel just isn't going to cope for multiple days.
Reasonable article on it here:
http://www.portablefridgesonline.com.au/fridge-faqs/fridge-f…
hold up people, need to get popcorn ready before the lynching
But it's enough to charge a 12v battery to run the TV/Computer at night.
They're about $250-$400 elsewhere. So it's a pretty good deal.they are German made panels, bosch is much better than the many chinese panels.
I don't know much about these small portable solar panels and what they can do. Could you run a small portable stove panel off it for instance?
No. These put out a max 40w. A stove will draw more like 1000w.
For the record, many Chinese panels are of similar quality to Germna/Japanese these days.They're designed to charge (car) batteries during the day, so you can use them at night/whenever.
You might get away with running an electric esky, but you really need to run that off a battery & use this to charge the (spare) battery.
I am most certainly not an expert in this field, but can apply my broad electrical experience here. Unless your talking about a tine portable cooler/heater, this panel will not power a normal size camping fridge/freezer. Not even a small camping fridge 24/7. You possibly could run a smaller fridge for part of the day, but not continuously 24/7.
It would also depend on weather conditions and temperature too. With the loss in efficiency in charge/discharge, even at maximum sun, you would not get the full 40W. Just at an estimate you would at least need double this or preferably over 100W and a good heavy capacity battery to run an average size camping fridge/freezer 24/7 in Australian summer conditions.
In saying that, this is still a good product for fitting purpose, will run/charge a lot smaller electrical gadgets such as phone, tablet, laptop, shaver, battery banks, lights, even smaller LCD TV's and DVD players with the proper power requirements such as voltage adaptors or inverters, unless it runs on 12v ( assuming that is the only available voltage put out on this model ).
I think these panels are designed to charge a 12v car battery that can be used to charge other devices from it. Most caravan/campervan solar panels are 80w and that is sufficient to keep a battery charged up enough to keep powering lights etc and even some low powered device charging of phones/computers/tvs etc via 5v adaptor, 12v output or 240v converter. Having only 40W is a bit limiting but should be fine to maintain a battery with minimal usage at night.
My experiencing traveling with a 120w panel was that it would keep a small camping fridge going for several days when we were stationary (those fridges draw pretty intermittently).
Of course, as soon as you're driving, the alternator smashes the solar output, so you only need solar if you're stationary for long periods.
Correct, thanks for elaborating on usage. Portable or mobile solar panels are nearly always hooked up to one or more batteries to make them useful. Only low wattage items would run constantly uninterrupted without blowing the overload fuse on the regulator on this 40W or even higher 80W or more panels.
These are more designed as an emergency back up to slowly but surely top up or recharge your 12V car/backup battery.
This is a step in the right direction, I'll be excited when (reasonably priced) >100W options appear. ozhunter68 explained some reasons why 40W isn't going to cut it.
You can get 120w for under $200 on ebay. You should be excited!
(e.g. http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/like/390980314869?limghlpsr=true&…)
In combination with a 100Ah battery you can run a camping fridge indefinitely.
The people who spend lots of money buying brand names poo poo the no name panels, but I know several people who use them without problem.My excitement levels are UP, as indicated by this chart!
http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://i.imgur.com/w1…
http://groupbuy.ebay.com.au/deal?itemId=291408456428
from front page of Ebay: MAXRAY 12V 120W Folding Solar Panel Kit
This panel might put out around 3Ah/ 8 hours per day = 24Ah
A small efficient fridge can use 20-30Ah/ daySo with this panel your running a little short when you consider some battery and reg losses. If you departed with a full 100Ah battery you might last a week though :)
However as other suggest big fridges use more, lots of warm beer added uses more, hot weather uses more, different fridges use differing amount etc etc
Just be aware you might damage the battery though. Deep cycle batteries shouldnt be drawn below ~50% or you start damaging them.
Depends what type of deep cycle, many modern batteries can be fully discharged.
All of them can, but kills the life big time. Check out the charge cycle graphs from the manufacturer. Generally, the ideal is to only discharge to 80%.
Will this charge my Eneloops?
It depends how many you need to pack together to run the fridge…
I have solar panels at home and I keenly watch what it can fully supply and what it can't.
I can confidently say this can power approximately 1/8 of my fridge, microwave freezer.
In fact, this is good for a few globes of light to be honest.
This is ridiculously expensive for the power you get. Worse deal ever IMHO.
"Worst deal ever IMHO"… that's a bit harsh Cloudy.
You have solar on your house… that's great but for those of us wanting a compact & portable solar collection device for taking on adventures then this may fit the bill perfectly. Setup the tent, unfold this panel set and bingo… plenty of power to charge basic communications or a small battery pack and small & lightweight enough to pack away to pull back out later on. Or you could unfold it on the dashboard of a car and keep the car battery in tip-top condition however granted there are far cheaper lower powered panels to do this. Either way I'd like to see you try that using one of the panels from your roof!
That 24ah estimate is not too far off. 40watts = 12v * 3.33A roughly (would lose some to efficiency/losses).
I have a Waeco 50l 12volt fridge/freezer running off a 125 AH AGM battery pack. These have been tested to draw around 20AH in a 24 hour period in fridge mode when the contents are cold at around 30 degrees ambient temperature. I use a cheap folding 140 watt eBay panel but it weighs 20kg.
Probably a bit too small for running a fridge via a battery pack.
This is a very lightweight panel that would be good for running LED lights and charging phones and laptops. As other people have mentioned you need a 12 battery to power devices. Generally you can't hook them direct to solar panels.
Was looking for the same thing on eBay etc. so I could get some dimensions and found this WAY overinflated camouflage version: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/NEW-40W-PORTABLE-TRAVEL-FOLDING-S…
Approximate dimensions fully unfolded are 127x42x0.5cm & Approximate dimensions fully folded are 42x26x4cm
lets be realistic here, you would need about 200 watts for a fridge and to recharge batteries.
Show your figures?
Need 80w and sunny days to run a 40-60lt fridge. I've got a 100w and its sufficent with a little buffer for cloudy days. Really these are worth about $1 per watt +$50 for the frame and solar charger.
40w is not enough to power your 12v fridge. Maybe only on a sunny day and if you open it once. Better to buy at least an 80w if you want to power fridge and charge car battery.
I've just given this deal a Greenie purely because there's nothing else in a similar foldable/portable package that comes near the power output for the money. The closest thing I could find (global eBay search) was a 30W version for $200 plus Postage: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Wagan-Solar-ePanel-30-Watts-Porta…
40W Foldable at Jaycar $199
Of course… but that's not in a soft, compact & lighter-weight package which is the major difference here although it seems it's a difference not many people seem to care about after reading the comments above ;) Fair enough, each to their own but there's definitely a market for these. It's not all just about rated power output.
Yeah, I didn't neg for the same reason, these soft fold panels aren't precisely comparable to a hard folder.
However, friends have similar to this: http://www.camp4ever.com/125w-flexible-solar-panel
and it is a pain to handle. They would choose a bi-fold hard design if they bought again.
This size panel is overkill for charging a phone or ipad or a few led lights, and is too big to carry in a backpack.
But it is too small to run a fridge. And too expensive if you are 4WD when you could get a higher capacity one cheaper.
I run a chinese 40w 12v panel into an MPPT charge/controller into a 40ah deep cycle battery for camping running my fridge (waeco copy 50lt fridge/freezer running at 6c in eco mode, VIC summer), lights and phone charging and can get the battery to float again after 6 hours of solid sun, 6 days camping. Running the same panel into a PWM charge/controller into a 9ah SLA running an amp, bluetooth, phone charge and lights, i can go from cutoff voltage to float in around 2 hours.
But no idea what the aldi unit is outputting, or if you can even access the output of the solar panel directly, not via it's built in 12v/5v controller. Does the built in controller even manage battery charging cycles? Im guessing you'd need to run the 12v output to a 12v battery charger into a battery and run your fridge direct off your battery.
Im waiting for some feedback before id consider it.
This might assist some in making a decision or for calculations.
http://www.naturepowerproducts.com/doc_db/55040_40wattfoldin…There is a manual available as well from http://www.naturepowerproducts.com/product-details.php?id=10…
I love how people scrutinise this so much, and then someone posts a 150w centre speaker for $499 from Rio, and that's a better deal ?
It's $170 so it isn't trivial, and there are alternatives that offer better performance cheaper, with few trade offs.
If you last looked at solar panels a few years ago, this would look like a good deal, but prices have dropped so dramatically I think it is barely average.
One of the good things about OzB is how quickly members point out alternatives that could save money.I didn't see the Rio deal, but I bet there were comments highlighting cheaper alternatives.
Need price and store in the title