solar panel trickle charger for battery

[omodos]

anybody used these before? my brother got me one, it is quite large probably the size of a video tape (for those that remember em) but not as thick, question is do the dc sockets in the x5 allow input to the battery as such? we get alot of sun out here and wondering if sticking this trickle charger in and leaving it attached is a good idea

[Bulk]

Why? That's what the alternator is designed for. If you want something as an emergency if your alternator fails a solar trickle charger won't do squat, and if you want something incase you leave the lights on then you will be able to swim to the Greece and back before your battery is charged so complete waste of money if you ask me

[TerminatorX5]

I used them before, i had two of them wired into the electrical system, i placed them behind the fixed rear quarter glass (the glass between C and D pillars), on the top of the some kind of vent (in reality it is just a grille, no vent there), stuck on the suction cups.

Those chargers will not charge the battery into a full state, they will barely keep up with the discharge that is happening with the locked and alarmed car, assuming that the panels are in broad daylight and perpendicular to the sunlight - in my case, both of the panels were at an angle to the light (almost vertical) behind the factory tinted glass (cold package). The fact that there were two of them, on either side of the car, kind of helped... If anything, it would buy you an extra day of the parking before battery goes dead...

I installed them because i already had the panels, and the install was simple with no immediate side effects...

At one point, i was thinking about mounting them on the sliding cover of the sunroof (still tinted glass but at least perpendicular to the sunlight)

[jgold47]

so, my company looked into getting these to recharge deep cycle batteries we wanted to use to light up signs where we didnt have electrical connections. We established that the ones strong enough to recharge (in fall weather- less light) would need to be enormous to keep the batteries fully charged with the lights on a photovolt. as in, there wernt enough sunlight hours in a day to fully charge one of the batteries unless we had a massive array.