Unboxing and trying out QuietKat’s SOLAR POWER e-bike charger
Today, I’m checking out this really cool solar-powered electric bicycle battery charger from Quietcat, not gonna make it sit through anything long here and drawn out.
We’ve got our two USB ports. Here we also have a dc barrel connector, so that’s probably for the main battery out charging so check out the specs uh 150 watts 54.6 volts 2.75 amps. So this is going to be a little bit more powerful than the standard 2 amp charger that comes with most 48-volt batteries.
It was actually like quite a small package when it was folded up all right. So there’s our solar panel: we have no wires or plugs probably in the bag. Here all right here we go pile of plugs and the instructions and a couple of carabiners, so the carabiners are probably for hooking onto these corners here. So if you want to hang it up and get a better angle for the sun right now, it’s a bit earlier in the morning the sun’s at maybe like a 50ish degree angle. So the better way to charge with this would be to hold it at a bit more of an angle like this, so you could actually like hang this on something all right see what kind of wires we got here all right.
So here we’ve got a three-pin plug to a dc barrel plug these three pins are pretty common with a lot of battery types. So here we’ve got our standard dc barrel. These are probably 5.5 by 2.1 millimeters.
That’s pretty common in the e-bike space. Here we’ve got alligator clips to a dc barrel plug, and these are the standard. I don’t remember what these are called. These are your standard solar panel plugs to that dc barrel and uh yeah. This looks like she’s just eight millimeters.
I have to look that up. I’m sure if that’s five or eight all right, so let’s see what battery I have here today, all right. So here I’ve got a 48-volt battery and I believe Quietcat has a 52-volt version of this. If you’ve got a 52-volt pack and let’s make sure this plugs in here, yep all right, so we’ve got that squared away now, let’s scooch this forward a bit all right. So now we got to plug into and I see, there’s a red light.
Now. That’s turned on on this box so that probably means that we’re good to go here, we’re getting solar power, all right so plug that in and I’m charging. So that’s pretty awesome, I’m out here in the middle of a park, there are no plugs for probably a mile. In any direction and I’m charging my electric bike battery just straight from the sun. This thing is going to take probably about four hours or so to charge this battery, assuming I’m getting peak power, usually with these solar panels.
You know if they’re rated for, say 100 watts you’re, probably going to get somewhere around 75 during most average conditions. Rarely you’re going to get the actual peak output unless they’ve rated this. You know more realistically about real-world power most of the time. Those ratings are sort of ideal conditions in a lab, but for our use here, where we’re just trying to charge out here in the field, and we don’t have any other option. This is a really nice and compact setup to be able to charge your batteries and when you’re out, camping or hunting, or you know anywhere out in the field – and you don’t have a place to plug in 2.
5 amps is a lot better than zero. A lot of your bikes, don’t even come with a 150-watt charger. A lot of times they come with a 100-watt charger, so you’re already getting more power than a lot of bikes will give you right out of the box all right now, I’m curious how hard this Is going to be to fold back up, so I think it went this way and then I think from the end it rolled up. Oh no, we accordion like that. Okay, oh, I think I got it first drive well.
That was a lot easier than I was thinking. It would be all right, not bad, and then I like this carry case here. Let’S stick all the cables back in it. Oh man, look at that that actually went together really well. I thought that was going to be hard to get back together, but it actually packs up better than I expected.
So as far as this goes, I think it’s a pretty awesome piece of kit. Now it is pretty expensive. I think it’s something like 750 bucks, so you’re paying out the wazoo for the ability to charge off-grid. But if you don’t have any other option, you know you just don’t have a plug around and you’re in the middle of the field like this, then this would be a pretty cool way to charge. Just know it’s going to cost you a pretty penny all right.
