Not long ago I bought an Anker power station, a C2000. It’s basically a 2.5 gallon bucket full of electricity. 2 kilowatt hour battery, a fairly beefy inverter that can put out 22A continuous and peaks at something like 33A so it can both run AND start my table saw.
It also has a solar power input, A DC jack on the side, with I believe an MPPT charger built-in. It came with a big weird flexible solar panel that is allegedly rated for 200 watts, I barely ever saw 80. I think it’s built the same way as like a backpack solar panel, but it’s 2 feet tall and 6 feet wide. Difficult to deal with.
Went to Harbor Freight, picked up a pair of 100 watt panels there. $119 each. More typical glass with aluminum frame rigid panel. These are working considerably better. The one thing: The panels have Anderson Powerpole connectors, I had to buy a separate cable set, and the Anderson to MC4 connector cable I bought at Harbor Freight is backwards. I guess it’s designed to be a load-end and not a source-end cable?
I had to pull the Geordi Maneuver: Reverse the polarity.
What I did is cursed. I know it’s cursed. On the adapter cables, I de-pinned the Anderson Powerpoles and swapped them left for right. So a red wire is going into a black connector. The color coding on the cable is backwards. You know that movie Defending Your Life, with Rip Torn? When I die and go to Judgement City, they’re going to ask me about this. But it works.
With the voltage you’re running I don’t think it’s a concern.
Gross and uncomfortable though, I agree.
The copper is perfectly fine. It’s just the color of the jackets. For a good 50cm, + is black and - is red. It’s bad juju. What’s the proper hoodoo for warding off the juju from incorrectly color coded power cables? Burning lavender? Changing the batteries in your smoke detectors?
I can confirm the Anker has reverse polarity protection on the DC input. It just didn’t do anything when I plugged a panel in wrong by trying the connectors as-is out of the box. It didn’t even bitch at me.
My father owned a Lotus, several, they came with random battery cables either both black or both red.