Victron appeals to my tech side, never thought of that!
“Buy Once Cry Once” is awesome LoL
I don’t mind to it’s just I don’t need a grenade in a water ballon fight. I’ve seen that pros and ordering the 75/15, and Renogy 100W panel and 20’ cables unless there’s a better bang for the buck panel?
Thanks again everyone
At some point, there's value vs need, IMHO. There's brilliant people here with extensive knowledge and experience that you should definitely tap into. Read all you can, ask questions when you need, and decide what is best for you.
Take into account the total cost, for me I considered the hours upon hours that I scoured, fretted, and waffled back and forth on pulling the trigger for low-buck stuff AFTER I spend months reading everything I could. There's a certain level of anxiety and stress involved with any purchase, regardless of the cost. I think sometimes going bargain basement can be as stressful (for me) as ponying up $$$ for top shelf. On the other side of that, if there's not a significant need (or the budget), sometimes crying once might not make sense or even be an option. My muffler is a $14 RockAuto universal can, but my brakes are all genuine ATE from Germany. Spend where you get the value for the important stuff, play instead of pay where you can. For our purposes, solar is more of a "nice to have" instead of a "must have" situation. I put together our system on the cheap because it's spot of importance was pretty far down the list, but the whole idea was something I wanted to do for the learning experience. If it dies in a year, well, then that's a year I got out of it for little $ but lots of education. If it isn't enough, then I'll know what I want and go better quality as the budget allows. Then again, I'm doing all this on a 41 year old VW that might see 2-3 days of use a trip in the New England woods. YMMV
If you will indulge me on a little segue, there's definitely cost vs value. We started keto back before it was "a thing," and had to make a lot of things that now - if you have the money - you can go to a box store and buy. We killed 2 Ninja & one Magic Bullet blender\food processors in less than a year before the better half convinced me to purchase a Blendtec. It was expensive, but when I added up the costs of the lesser appliances, it wasn't really. 6 years later (and one year still left on the warranty), it is still kicking butt. Make almond flour out of whole almonds? Blendtec. Make pudding in 30 seconds? Blendtec. Make butter? Blendtec. Chip trees? Blendtec. Make sand out of rocks? Blendtec. The thing is a BEAST and worth every penny. We go through 12-14 pots of coffee a day (caffeine helps my ADD better than Adderall ever could) so we have a commercial Bunn since Mr Coffee really only works for a pot or two a day. Expensive? Yes. Great value? Most definitely. Spend where you get the value for the important stuff, play instead of pay where you can. I just installed my solar setup, cost me $90.09 plus $76 for 110AH marine battery (at a going out of business sale). The brand names don't matter because they are found under 1,000,000,000 different labels for the same crap, though I did invest in the wire - going fine strand copper with UV tolerant insulation - because not only efficiency, but if I upgrade, it will be reused and worth the investment.
Tested the panel out of the box, 22v DC. Clipped on a couple of leads to a big resistor I have kicking around and got 8.3a in full sun 90 degrees to the panel. Wired it up with a 20’ run of 10ga fine strand copper wire soldered to the diodes, wrapped in that expandable nylon wire sheathing, terminated with a SAE connector. Tested in the shade about 7:30PM and still got over 18v over the 20’ run of cable.
Wired up the pass-through connector for the panel, added a master cutoff switch that kills the battery ground on the house system so I can just toss the switch instead of dealing with disconnection it when it is going to be sitting for a while.
I put DTDP switches inline with both ammeters, that way I can see both pull and push just by reversing polarity of the reference leads, one for house, one for vehicle. Now know my 2 ham radio pulls 8.8a when transmitting, and the starter pulls 104 when cranking
Cost:
Cheap ass panel - $35.99 shipped
Cheap ass “50a” PWM controller - $12.29
Cheap ass ammeters - 2 for $19.97
100’ 10ga fine copper strand wire - $17.48 (used half)
SAE connectors - $13.79
50’ nylon 0.5” expandable sheathing (plus 50’ 0.25” roll for other stuff): $10.49
Playing around with something new - $ priceless.
