Sunforce 39810 80-Watt High-Efficiency Polycrystalline Solar Panel with Sharp Module
 List Price: Price: $499.95 You Save: $200.04 (29%) |
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Customer Reviews
An excellent bargain for either battery usage or grid tie - great size tooQUICK UPDATE: Sunforce is selling obsolete Sharp 12% efficient panels no longer in production at 123W/panel, 2 panels to a kit with a junky inverter and charge controller.. See my review at but choose cautiosly as that product is from 2008 and is now obsolete which makes expansion of your system difficult due to the efficiency change.---back to the review as it stood originally---In evaluating solar panels (and systems of many panels) the typical pricepoint is $5.10/watt in high volume production. If you are finding better pricing than that something is wrong.An example may be inefficient panels that use larger panels, causing massive panel size such that it is 4-8 times larger than this panel with the same output...
Great panel
Took the panel to Death Valley for a few days to charge my trailer battery and while I ran laptop and iPod stereo for hours during the night, it quickly recharged the battery the next morning. Built a solid stand/rack to keep it upright using pvc pipe that's easy to disassemble, secure and lock. At 80 watts, it's just one panel where some 65watt units have 3 panels.
80 watts of pure power
As my first venture into solar energy this has been a nice panel. I've had it about a month. I paired it with a "Xantrex Technologies 802-1500 XPower Powerpack 1,500-Watt Portable Backup Power System" and a "Sunforce 60032 30 Amp Digital Charge Controller". The panel is 12 volt, 4.6 amps though at this point I'm seeing up to 13.6 volts and 5 amps. I suspect over time as the panel weakens it will be more toward the 12 volt, 4.6 amp. The panel was simple to hook up and came with what was needed. I did go purchase new wire as I needed more distance for where I mounted it. I'm able to charge the battery from dead to full in 2 days. If I were to rotate the panel through the day I feel I could fully charge in 1 day.Nice for backup charging and learning. For any real application you would need a ton of these though.
