Windshield mounted solar car battery charger - the Sunsei SolarCharger
I have pondered (and posted) about a few ideas regarding charging the battery of your car with solar power rather than with the alternator, except when necessary. Here is a solar car-battery charger that you can get today. It's called the Sunsei SolarCharger, and you mount it on your windshield where it can get good access to the sun. I suppose that it would work on the dash or on an open sunroof as well. The charger features a trickle charger when the battery reaches its full charge, so there is no worry about leaving it hooked up for too long. I use a trickle charger on my motorcycle when the weather turns cold; this would work out just fine for me, if I were able to mount it outside the garage and run the cable inside to my bike. I think that I may just have to look into one of these for myself! Anyone else out there?
If you want one, I did a quick search and found them here. At that site, they range from $40-$160.
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[Source: SlipperyBrick]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jimmy 3:45PM (3/08/2007)
VW has been using these for years to keep batteries fresh during transport. You can easily find them for sale on eBay.
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ali 12:44AM (3/10/2007)
I've got a larger solar charger I used on my old van which slowly discharged. Problem I ran into was that the vehicle (in Albuquerque summer) got very hot inside and the plastic housing the solar panel warped. Panel still works, but I need to be a bit careful with it now.
Make sure whatever panel you get has some reverse charge protection, so that it doesn't discharge your battery at night. It's pretty common to have a couple of diodes in the panel to prevent this, but just make sure yours does.
My panel also came with different attachments so that I could hook up the panel directly to the battery, vice going through the 12 VDC connection inside the car.
Still, it is nice to have. Would be nice to have an integrated panel though.
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