Solar trickle charger
 

So the inevitable happened this morning, walked down to the garage and the batteries dead.

I use the car prolly once a week on average atm, so it was gonna happen at some point.

Now my garage is a mile away from my home and has no power, so i've been looking at the solar trickle chargers, chuck the solar panel on the roof of the garage, cable through and onto the car battery or in the cig lighter (if its powered after ignition off)

Anybody used one? if so are they any good?

Avoid the diddy little 1.5watt dashboard crap. They only put out a hundred milliamps, so will just about prevent a bettery from draning during the day, but it will never properly charge a partially charged battery.

IMO to charge and maintain a battery you need at least a 10watt panel which is about 0.7 amps, accompanied by a proper charge controller (so it'll properly maintain the battery without over charging it). A 5watt charger will suffice, depedning on how much drain any alarms/trackers may have.

I can reccomend looking at http://www.photonicuniverse.com/

I've bought a 80watt folding panel from their Amazon shop (http://www.amazon.co.uk/s?ie=UTF8&fi...search-type=ss) for camping and its a superb bit of kit. It puts out 5amps, so I can run my beer fridge without flattening my battery. When I'm not using it for camping, its on the roof of my shed maintaining the battery on my Jag. :D

Obvious thats a bit of overkill for you, but it gives a bit of perspective of what you can do with a bigger panel :lol1:

I only use my hatch may be once a week and with alarm and tracker I had the flat battery problem too, but since I brought this 6W solar charger from halfords the battery has been good to go when ever I've needed it. As the cig lighter is not permanent live I just use the croc clips and attach direct to the battery plus I added four sunction pads to the rear of the solar panel so it sticks nicely on the windscreen and comes off easy.
http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/s...egoryId_255205

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cheers guys, looks like the way forward, as long as i stay away from the micky mouse 1.5w ones and go for something 4-6w

cheers

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1110879363...84.m1423.l2649

think im gonna try this, 5w and not too expensive, i have visions of spending alot and it getting nicked lol

http://www.trinasolar.com/uk/product/PC05.html

Try these for size - they are used throughout the country for many solar park projects. Generally mounted at about 25 degrees from a flat surface or bung them on your roof.

Yes avoid the 1.5W ones - complete waste of money. I had one for my motorbike in a shed with no power, mounted on the shed roof. Did bugger all. Oxford Solariser I think it was.

Lil bit ott for a trickle charger on a council garage lol =)

Yea cool, gonna order the 5w on eBay and see how I get on

Cheers