putting spare panel to work

One of the rewards of having copious solar is the ability to share excess power with others. I’ve done this before by running an outdoor extension cord to a nearby camper (at an RTR), or through the crude 12v/usb power outlet station by the side door. It’s automagically enabled when there is excess power and disables itself when house power drops below 12.9v.

But I also have extra panels, which I set out in shady areas or when insolation is otherwise particularly challenging. I’ve thought these might be put to good use by a nearby camper who had small/nonexistant solar but needed to charge a power station / solar generator thingy. I didn’t have anyone to experiment on, and after I did have a victim co-experimenter I didn’t have a good way to get MC4 power into the devices.

Enter this little doodad, an MC4-to-barrel-connector adapter with 4 different barrel sizes. The default connector is the right size for DC’s Rockpals lithium “magic box”. Worked a treat.

The Rockpals doesn’t have any numerical displays, but I’m guessing the PWM controller can extract 50-70w from the panel (5.56A Imp x 9-12.6v, depending on state of the internal 3S lipo pack).