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Sunforce Digital Charge Controller

Customer Rating:
I've purchased the Sunforce 30 Amp controller, and the Sunforce 39810 80-watt solar panel. I completed the easy installation and both units are working as advertised. The panel provides approx 4.7 amperes on a sunny day to recharge my battery.

great controller at a fair price

Customer Rating:
I've lived with solar panels for 10 years now, mostly on a cruising yacht, and I decided to try one of these controllers with a couple solar panels I just installed on my recently acquired land yacht (a used 5th wheel trailer) and it works great! So good in fact that I just ordered a second one to bring back to my boat in the Caribbean this fall to regulate the 4 solar panels which I live with there. It's much more than just an on/off relay so it charges the batteries much better.

Sunforce 30 Amp charge controller

Customer Rating:
Item works, I expected a little better performance. Shows amperage of charge accurately when it is higher than 2.5 amps, at less then 2.5amp display goes to 0.1 and does not display lower currents, then starts weirdly to "pulse".
The built in Voltmeter is not too exact. It is important to know if battery bank has 12.8V or 12.5V since this reflects the percentage of its charge - 12.8V = close to 100%; 12.5 = 70%. The Voltmeter in the device I got is about 3% off ; about 0.3V to 0.4V - I never know till I do an exact measurement).
So basically it is o.k. if one is not looking for 99% accuracy. Nevertheless, for the money I spent, I thought I'd get little more.

So far it works great for me!

Customer Rating:
I have not had any problems with this charger and Ive compared it to my volt meter and all seems to match up!

Liked it at first...

Customer Rating:
Bought this controller from Amazon and really liked it at first. In fact I still like it but am having to return it.

The controller works great and is a lot better than the previous model I had on the solar panels.

Problem is that the voltage display on the unit is not working right. I have 3 80 watt GE solar panels hooked up to this controller. They put out about 22 vdc to the charge controller, which is then regulated by the controller going to the batteries at anywhere from 12-14 vdc.

Hooked the controller up and it was fine for the first hour or two. Then checked the voltage display and it was reading 20 vdc! If it was really at this level, it would overcharge my 12 volt batteries and ruin them very fast. Checked the actual output with a digital volt meter and it was actually at 13.7, which is normal. Tried a second meter and got the same reading.

End of the story is that the new controller works great, but the meter on the front of the unit that tells you what the meter is putting out to the batteries is defective 1-2 hours after being hooked up. Its going back and will be getting a better controller and hope it works better and for a longer time. Amazon was very easy to work with but hope that they get things like this fixed.