Sunforce 7 Amp Charge Controller

I bought this charge controller to use with a smaller panel I put on my camper this summer. It worked flawlessly, and is small enough to fit into the battery box with my marine battery. No complaints at all, and I like that even in dim light -- it still has an LED that shows you it is charging the battery with a solar panel. Easy to use, and very simply to set up. If you have crimp, solder, or twist electrical wires -- you can add one of these to your new solar rig. Have fun learning solar technology!

I know, it's a cluster, i tinker a lot, so the shed doesn't get fancy boxes/enclosures When i bought this exact item (Amazon is the actual seller currently and was also the seller back when i purchased the product) it was $8.50 and i just wanted to hook up a 12v SLA deer feeder battery with a 5 watt solar panel. Every thing i researched basically said i didn't NEED a charge controller at that wattage, but i do know over-charging is bad for batteries, so i bought this cheapo on/off charge controller and it does what is says cuts-out @ 14.2v (sometimes we tap 14.3v for less than a second but instantly drops w/cut-out) and cuts-in at 13v. It does not say PWM charging, it does not say MPPT charging, this controller is nothing fancy and i would have never paid $18 for it like it is currently listed for. At the time of purchase, i also bought a cheapo PWM controller (for another project) and it was cheaper than this item currently is and i can still find identical PWM controllers (upgraded actually since now they include USB ports) that are cheaper than this SUNFORCE controller. Unless they bring this price back down, i'd say get a real charger, especially if you are using a real deep-cycle battery. I would not recommend this product to anybody while there is better, cheaper, and more feature rich products abundantly available (unless you are just too lazy to spend 20 min on the internet figuring out what voltages you need set in (or atleast check and confirm appropriate defaults), in which case, shame on you for taking on a technical project while refusing to learn the technical details) I have given it the credit it deserves, it works, and for me it was a good value at the time, but this item is 214% the price it was a year ago (i.e. 114% more than i paid for it) and there are many products that are better and even had improvements while staying at the same price point from a year ago. This sunforce charge controller really is nothing special, 7A charging w/o PWM or MPPT, right now i have a different 10A PWM charge controller in my cart, it is under $15, has a display, adjustable settings (if you like), and even load terminals to ignore (just wire up same as this model, only connect your battery and PV panel to the controller and wire your load straight off the battery) Dear AMAZON: i have copied this review and saved it as a word document. If you take down this review too, i will repost it. I have not listed any competitor prices or SPECIFIC products aside from the product being review. It has been compared to another similar product, all items mentioned are relevant to the product reviewed.

I recently went camping and use this controller in a self-contained solar battery pack (housed within a .50 cal ammo can). I chose this controller for the low cost, and the small size. It fits perfectly, and worked perfectly to control the incoming solar charge. We had ample power the entire 5 days, even though 5 guys were using the pack to recharge our various electronics. One note: if you're using a battery tender, you'll need to attach it directly to the battery, as the minder doesn't kick in when it can't immediately sense the battery (because of the controller in the way).

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. Three stars! from me. Thanks for reading my review!

I have a single panel that I had connected direct to a battery without a controller. This worked fine in the Columbia Gorge. However, upon relocating to Central Oregon, the sun is too intense and the single panel was boiling out my batteries. Installation of this controller was very easy. The unit is light and small and was easy to attach to the back of my panel with some double stick tape. It is totally automatic and the issue of boiled batteries is a thing of the past.

Panneau solaire

Great service

works great with the Coleman 40 watt solar panel

Fit my solar panel perfectly. Works great. Replaced the previous one which was severely corroded from years of exposure to rain.

Nice controller,very simple. I have it hooked up to a 20watt panel, charging up one deep cycle battery. It keeps my battery topped up and ready to use.