Hey, how’s, it going brian here from RV with tito calm now this channel is all about DIY projects for your RV. So if you want to learn how to do your own RV upgrades and repairs that’ll help save you money that’ll help build your skills and help you get the most out of your RV experience like being able to use Solar in your RV then start by subscribing to this channel.
Now in this video, we’re gonna talk about a new product that I just received for some testing and review from lens Sun, solar and it’s. A complete solar charging solution that believe it or not fits in this bag.
It’s. The 200 watt solar blanket from Len Sun, solar now yeah, I said 200 watts, so we got 200 watts of solar that you can fit in here. Super compact easy to store, and it includes a solar charge, controller all the cables and the solar panels themselves.
To give you a solar charging solution for your for your camper RV van whatever. So we’re gonna dig into this and see what it can do. So if you’re looking for a really compact solution, this might be something to consider.
Now I’m gonna also show you how I plan to use it on my RV. I’ve, been thinking about how I might mount it, and I’ve, come up with a couple of ideas that I think are going to work really well, so let’s dig into it.
Do some testing and the suit we can do with this [ Music ]? Well, first of all, I really like the fact that this is that everything’s all separate, so everything is just interchangeable with these connectors.
These have nice heavy-duty Andersen connectors on all of the accessories here. Even the solar charge controller has Andersen connectors, so you could even just use this panel without any of the accessories just using your anderson connector and that even has a an MC 4 adapter.
So you just plug that in here and then you can plug this panel. If you just wanted to use the panel all by itself into you, know an existing charging system, if you have a charge controller already and just plug it into any MC 4 compatible input.
So that’s, that’s, really handy right off the bat the panel itself. You know you can just use this all by itself. It has looks like twelve of these individual small solar panels on there they’re. All looks like they’re, probably connected in series to give you this 200 watt output.
No, I looked at the specs and I think it’s. Rated at the operating voltage is about 18 volts and the operating current in amps is just over 11 amps. So without any kind of boosting or anything like that, you know this is a 200 watt rated solar panel.
So pretty handy, pretty versatile, you can move it around. It conforms to a lot of different surfaces. It also has these these little loops on on these. There’s like four on each side, and you can use these to hang it on something.
I’d, like to see these to be a little bit more heavy-duty. I may mention that to them, because I I see myself using he’s quite a bit, and I I’m wondering if these will kind of wear out over time. So each of these panels also has an etf ii coating on them, which is really nice.
They’re, really easy to clean. They’re, really durable. You can’t scratch them and they they just look like this. For a long period of time, as opposed to the PE tee, that you see on a lot of semi-flexible solar panels, which is that shiny kind of glossy surface which tends to scratch and wear out quickly over a couple years.
It comes with a nice long extension. So if you wanted to move this panel like quite a ways from your RV, I think this is a 15 meter extension again with the anderson connectors on them so easy to just plug in here and run it to your charge, controller, which is here now.
This is an MPPT charge controller, so most of the portable systems, you see come with a PWM charge controller, where you can really take advantage of some MPPT charging, which will give you a little bit of a boost, in addition to the 200 watts, just right out Of the gate, with the with this solar panel, so again these have Andersen connectors on them, so we got our solar coming in our battery coming out.
This is for auxilary, something I’m, not going to use that, but it also has a has a temperature probe, so it’s, going to probably adjust the charging based on. You know the ambient temperature, where this is so it doesn’t, look like there are any settings on here to be able to adjust the battery type and everything.
So I’m just going to assume it’s. Just going to do just kind of a standard charging profile which is typical for a portable system. This is a 15 amp MPPT charge controller. I think it looks like it can take up to.
It says on here: yeah 15, amp and up to 55 volts input. So yeah I sell MPPT controller. Now what you would do is you would just mount this close to where your battery is that you want to charge. If you wanted to do a more permanent mount for this and then whenever you want to take this out, you just plug it in to your to your connector here and you’re off and running, and it’s gonna and You just already leave it to plugged into your battery or you can disconnect it and then reconnect it when you want now, of course, if you wanted to, you could do a more permanent set up here for connecting to your battery and just wire up another anderson Connector and then just why are those permanently to your positive and negative terminals on your battery, so you wouldn’t have to use the alligator clips every time.
Well, I want to run a couple of tests just to see if we can get some power out of this and see how much power we can get out of this panel, but leaving it on the ground like this right now is probably not the most optimal Setup, given that the sun’s, pretty low and even a little bit of haze over it, so you know the angle is coming in at about 45 degrees.
So what I’m going to do is is hang it from the side of my truck, and maybe we’ll, get a more perpendicular angle to the Sun and be able to get more out of it. Alright. So I have the solar panel with the extension here plugged into the MPPT controller and it’s going into the solar panel input, and I have a couple of test probes here.
So I can measure my voltage coming in. So you can see right now it’s. Twenty-One point four or five volts and I’m, going to be able to use this clamp meter to measure any current coming in here and then we can also test the output coming out of the charge controller to this battery, which is going to Be powering this inverter and to create a load on it.
I’m, going to use this adjustable heat gun. So let’s, go ahead and run a test and see how it goes. There’s still a little bit of cloud cover in front of the Sun, so I’ll, wait a few minutes, and maybe that’ll clear and we’ll, give us a little better result: [ Applause, ], all right so right now coming right out of the solar panel, I’m, getting about seven point, six or so amps, seven point five and sixteen and a half volts going into the charge controller.
So now coming out of the charge controller. It should be a little bit higher, so I’m gonna measure. The current now coming out of the church controller, so yeah right now, I’m at nine and a half amps that’s coming out of here.
Going through the battery and going to the inverter now, another thing I noticed just now is that this a panel seems to be pretty shade-tolerant. So right now I’m, getting about 7.3 amps right out of the solar panel before the charge controller and all that.
But if I stand in front of this here, so I’m shading like a third of it or a quarter of it. At least I’m, still getting five point: eight amps out of the out of the panel, so I stand right in front of it.
I’m shading, like half of the panel and still getting four amps. I can’t cover the whole thing, but yeah still getting four amps being drawn out of the solar panel, so that’s. That’s, pretty good! That’s, pretty good in terms of shade tolerance.
Now, while I was testing, I was paying attention to this solar charge, controller and kind of checking it out, and you know, obviously, when we, when we did do the test, you know we saw some MPPT boost to the MPPT.
Part of it seems to be working really well, you know we saw some. You know lower current coming in with a higher voltage coming in and it converted that successfully to higher current. You know sometimes boosting it up to 2 or 3, even more amps, and you know once it lower the the the voltage on the output to match the battery charge voltage.
So that worked quite well. There are no real settings on here that you can change. So I mentioned that earlier, so you’re, pretty much stuck with with what you get and it detects your system voltage. So it’ll, detect the the voltage of your battery and adjust accordingly, and I think the charging profile is pretty standard.
Probably like fourteen point. Six to fourteen point, eight volts to bulk charge, and then I think it floats at about thirteen point. Eight or something like that, but the other thing that I learned about this is that it only works for for a lead-acid batteries.
So if you have a flooded battery or an AGM, then it should work just fine if you have a lithium battery and you want to use it too. With this it’s not going to work, so I actually tried it with this little lithium iron phosphate battery that I have and it this one has.
It actually has a built-in battery management system. So when I hooked it up the the charge controller that came with this package, didn’t work with it. In fact, there’s, a little red light. Next to the green charging blinking light, then the red light was flashing and and then it wouldn’t it the charge controller, wouldn’t output, any any any current or voltage.
So I’m thinking. It’s, just not compatible with with lithium. If you do have a lithium battery, then you know with a battery management system built in you’re gonna have to use your own charge controller, and if you do have that setup, you’re, probably already figure in that outfit.
That’s, the case with a lot of things with lithium, but but otherwise it seems to work okay with with flooded AGM or you know, regular, lead acid battery for an inexpensive little MPPT controller. It seems to work okay now.
Another thing I want to point out is, as I was moving the the panel around as I was hanging it using that bungee cord from the the rack on the truck. My suspicions were right. I was using those little tabs on the side and, and one of them actually broke – and I thought I had this when I was filming it.
But I didn’t, have the record button pressed at the time, but but it did break and you know so. I think you know a stronger some sort of stronger mount on the side would be a good improvement. I could probably modify this to put some to put some grommets in there.
I think something like a grommet or something that’s really sturdy. That isn’t going to pull apart because of the stitching is, is going to be a value because I’m going to use this to hang it quite a bit.
I think, and I need those tabs to be to be really strong and I think because there there you know you might want to hang it from a tree or whatever as well, and I I think that’s, a good improvement. You know if lens son wants to make that improvement, to make this this setup even better.
I typically carry an extra two hundred watts of solar, in addition to the 600 that I have on the roof anyway, just as a as an auxilary source of Sun and solar power. When the sun’s low, because he just it comes in very handy at times to be able to just get a little bit extra solar in the morning in the evening or when the sun’s low and you’Re parked in in the location or you might even be in a shady spot and you need to run a solar panel out into the Sun.
Now I’m, going to try to use this solar blanket instead of my my current 100 watt panels that I normally carry and I’m, going to mount them to the RV differently. So I’ve picked up these. These these suction cup – these are heavy-duty suction cups that I I’ve used in other projects before and you may have seen them, but they’re designed for a paddle boards, but this also comes with a nice little clip on here.
So I can clip these to the little little hooks on the on that solar blanket and I can mount them to the front of the RV here, the side or here in the back now I’m gonna go ahead and drop a couple Links in the description to the lens son website and I believe they may have an Amazon link as well an Amazon page where you can learn more about it and dig into the specs a little bit more.
If you want to now. I do plan on using this a little bit more and putting it to the test in a more of a real boondocking situation for for a period of time, and I’ll, see how it holds up and maybe even come up with some some Different ways to mount it and use it on the RV.
But if you end up picking up one of these or something similar and have some comments and feedback as well feel free to come back and leave those in the comments here for the rest of us. Now I hope you enjoyed this video in this review and if you did give it a thumbs up – and I will see you in the next one – take it easy
