DontUredRing
New Member
Bought this over a year ago and something told me to teat it but I though "nahhh, I don't need to use it yet". It's one of those generic Coleman 18w panel kits that comes in a 7A charge controller from tractor supply. I decided I was going to pair it up with a few more panels I have, just for one of my campers in the woods at the back of my place. No power from it and so I started digging in. The 1st pic is what I saw when I opened the junction box. Definitely wrong. I'm guessing that whoever wired it, was about to quit. Hopefully they did. The 2nd pic is my interpretation of how it was supposed to be good. It's got a 1N4007 diode in there and I've got the anode aimed towards the positive from the panel. And I also wanted to make sure that the bare prong on the connector was indeed negative. Red wire, but negative nonetheless. The rest of the pics are of my testing, and as you can see, that's jacked up like a soup sandwich. No output originally, fixed the wiring in the junction box, diode is still good, and now I only get output with the negative probe in the bare pros on the connector, and holding the positive probe in my hand and then touching the aluminum side of the panel with my hand. Note that the positive probe directly to the aluminum gives me nothing, but holding the probe in my hand and then touching the aluminum gives me about 16v-18v. Also, touching the positive probe without touching the panel at all, gives me up to 8v. I'm pretty electric but not like that.
The panel has never been used, purchased new and was kept in a dry place where it could not have been damaged. I was thinking that the panel is shorted out and have contemplated just trashing it, as it's too late to return it. The charge controller that came with it is good, but is not fused, so I will be adding a fuse to it. It works great, as long as im touching the aluminum with my bare hand and I may just have the kids go hold onto the panel when I want to charge a battery, instead of grounding them because im all about productivity. Anyways, I thought you guys would get a kick out of that.
The panel has never been used, purchased new and was kept in a dry place where it could not have been damaged. I was thinking that the panel is shorted out and have contemplated just trashing it, as it's too late to return it. The charge controller that came with it is good, but is not fused, so I will be adding a fuse to it. It works great, as long as im touching the aluminum with my bare hand and I may just have the kids go hold onto the panel when I want to charge a battery, instead of grounding them because im all about productivity. Anyways, I thought you guys would get a kick out of that.
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