Questions on Harbor Freight Solar

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Small Cabin Forum / Off-Grid Living / Questions on Harbor Freight Solar


Author	Message
moneypitfeeder Member	# Posted: 8 Jun 2019 06:37pm Reply Hi All, We just got a 100 Watt solar panel kit for our cabin--we went the noob route and got the kit from Harbor freight, since it seems like it is plug and play. Our needs are really pretty small, everything we run is dc, couple pumps, recharge cell phones, etc. Question is, can we charge directly (during daytime) off the charge controller connected to the solar cells, or does the controller always need to be connected to a battery? I read another thread here that said you could "cook" a controller w/o having it connected to a battery. Thanks!

darz5150 Member	# Posted: 8 Jun 2019 06:50pm - Edited by: darz5150 Reply Keep it hooked to a battery. Also check the manual. I believe you hook the battery up before connecting the panels.

moneypitfeeder Member	# Posted: 8 Jun 2019 07:08pm Reply Thanks! The manual does state to connect the battery first, it just doesn't throw a caution in there so it wasn't glaring or obvious that that had to be done first, thank you for potentially saving our system!