Review on ECO-WORTHY 10W 12V Off Grid Small Solar Panel Kit - Efficient Waterproof 10 Watt Solar Panel with Charge Controller and Battery Clips Adapter by Anthony Daniels

Solar panel and charge controller are working properly. Cables are useless, wasting 10-20% of all solar energy and causing charging problems. The charge controller is not waterproof or even waterproof and it takes patience to connect the wires to the green connector. The rest of the charger works well. Instead of returning it, I fixed those issues for about $15. Actual Specs: I measured this device by applying 1.4 amps to my dead car battery on a sunny Maine December afternoon. That's around 18 watts in the middle of winter, which is pretty good for a 20-watt panel. That was before I fixed the wiring. The sticker on the back of the solar panel has slightly different specs than the Revain name. The maximum power is 25 watts. See attached photo. Charge Controller: The included charge controller works well. This is a 3A PWM intelligent charger that automatically switches between 3 charging phases: volumetric, absorption, float (drip). It has an LED that shows when it has solar power and what charging phase it is in. It prevents deep discharge below 10.8 volts and overcharging above 14.4 volts. At one point I thought my charger was broken and went looking for a replacement. A decent PWM charger like this will last 15-20, so it's a decent price. I found out later that the charger was fine, the problem was cheap cables (see below). I was a little concerned that the charger will drain the battery when there is no sun. Cheaper chargers will use some battery power at night and on very cloudy days until the sun comes back. I wanted to leave my system unattended for months on our short and overcast winter days without draining the battery, so I can't afford to use a lot of electricity when the sun goes down. Revain did not list current stock levels at the time of purchase. I measured that the current drain of the charger with no sun is about 1mA. This seems pretty reasonable compared to 10-50mA on other chargers. The charger comes with specifications that state the current consumption at 1.5 mA (see appendix). The specifications indicate that the charger is designed for gel batteries. Although it seems to work fine with my SUV battery. Cheap cables: I measured the battery voltage while charging on a sunny day. 13-14 volts is fine, but I only had 12.4 volts. I thought the controller was defective so I tried a different one. Same problem. I tried many things, went through all the connections many times, but nothing worked. It was definitely getting power from the solar panel, it just wasn't reaching the battery. Over the course of a few days I noticed that the battery was increasing very slowly, but the charger kept thinking that the battery was fully charged too soon and shut off too soon (float mode). I finally got the idea to check the battery voltage at the other end of the battery cables (where they connect to the charger). The charger put out 13.6 volts at about 1.5 amps and the battery only got 12.4 volts. That 10% of the sun's energy is wasted on the wire resistor! It was also enough to make the charger think the battery was charged and go into sleep mode, wasting even more of the energy generated. It will eventually still charge your battery if you're not using the battery for something else, but it will be slow. I switched all the wires to regular 16 gauge wires and that fixed everything. When charging with 1.5 amps, I measured 13.6 volts on the charger and 13.5 volts on the battery. Now it charges much faster and I can use the battery to power other things. I've included a picture of the cheap wires they include and some of the regular 16AWG wires I replaced them with. On the outside, this is deceptive, because cheap wires look pretty thick. But if you cut it open you'll see that the cheap wires are made almost entirely of rubber insulation and contain very little real metal. The panel appears to be waterproof and is covered with white silicone around the edges on the back. However, the charger is definitely NOT waterproof. It comes with clear silicone applied along the bottom of the green plug, but that's pointless as the top and sides of the plug have large holes and aren't sealed. I needed the charger to work outside in winter in rain, snow, ice, etc., so water entering could easily freeze and damage things. You can always buy silicone and caulk all the holes including the holes in the green connector where the wires connect, but then it will be very difficult for you to later remove and reconnect the wires. In the end I opened up the charging box and sprayed on a protective layer to make all the electronics waterproof. I then drilled a 1/8" hole in the white box to allow any water that got in to drain back out. This takes about 10 minutes. .amazon.com/dp/B00BXSMNWG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_AbSyybQ2NH5G4 I don't have that info anywhere seen differently, so I hope someone finds this information helpful!