Renogy 400 Watt 12 Volt Monocrystalline Solar Panel, 400W PWM, Bundle Kit with 30A Negative ground Charge Controller

Good starter kit, but not complete. I installed these panels on my 36 foot Safari Sahara motor home.

You will need to order the (Islandoffer – 5 Pairs of MC4 Male/ Female Solar Panel Cable Connectors), and the
(Solar Panel Cable Pv type wire 50 Ft – Mc4 Extension- 10awg – 600/1000vdc) This will enable you to hook the panels together in parallel for 12 volt service. Depending on your battery run, you may have to order two of the 50 foot cables, I did. I cut one in half for the battery supply (25 x 2) and used the other 50 foot, cut into pieces to connect the panels together.

For mounting on my roof I opted to go with 2 boxes of (25 Rubber Well Nuts #10-32 .807 Length 3/8″ Hole) and 2 packs of
(Steel Pan Head Machine Screw, Zinc Plated,T25 Star Drive, #10-32 Thread Size, 1-1/2″ Length, Fully Threaded,(Pack of 25),
instead of using the supplied self tapping bolts that came with the Z brackets. This was merely a personal choice on my part.
Since rooftops are different on different RV’s, you will have to determine what is best suited for your install.

Finished off the mounting process with a (4 Pack Dicor Self-leveling Lap Sealant) to seal the roof.

I attached a photo of the finished product. The two solar panels in the middle far left are factory installed panels. You can clearly see the difference.

Renogy’s website has plenty of resources for installation questions. The kit doesn’t really come with any directions. All in all I would say it was a straight forward install, if you take your time, even a beginner can do.

I now have a total of 10 of these panels. On sunny days it will fully charge my 1600ah battery bank by 11:00. When it’s cloudy, it still does a good job with charging.

Update: I added an additional 12 panels (total 2200 watts), converted to 2- 24 vdc systems with a total of 16- golf cart batteries (8 each system), installed 2- Aims pure sine wave inverters connected to my home breaker box. I now have enough power to run my house. I can even run a window air conditioner on sunny days. …and, no power company!

Update: I installed a 400 watt system to power my well.

Update: I added an additional 400 watts to the system on my house. I now have a total of 2600 watts for my house and 400 watts for my well. At this time I don’t see the need for any additional panels. What I need now is more batteries.

When I got my first Renogy 400 watt Solar Kit from Amazon, a few months ago, i was impressed with the quality solar kit. The panels are sleek and i like the data on the back panel. The MPPT/40 Amp, is the brain of the unit. Hook up your battery cables first to it, then your solar panels, and watch it collect solar Photons! Amazing and how exciting. In fact, they are so beautiful and rugged, I got several of these 400 watt kits and one Renogy 800 watt solar kit. I just recently got my April electrical bill and my KW usage was reduced to 52%. I only had 800 watts then. Now i think i have 2.6 KW solar power! All thanks to Amazon and Renogy!! I recently bought 2 x 500 watt wind generators from yes, Amazon at a great price. Now i have an interesting Hybrid Wind-Solar System. I’m trying to reduce my carbon footprint and be the custodian of Earth! Go Green!

The Renogy panels are well built and a quality product. The items shipped quickly and arrived in great condition. I will be ordering more of these panels in the future when we look at expanding our solar system. The charge controller that comes with the kit is not the one that’s pictured with the kit. It’s a basic PWM charge controller that you can’t even select battery type with. I ended up ordering a good charge controller separately to maximize my solar system’s efficiency. To hook up all 4 panels in parallel for 12V you will also need to purchase 4 x 1.5′ extension cables which are not included in the kit. Luckily I found that out when I downloaded their manual in PDF format from the Renogy website before heading to camp to set these up. I was lucky in a way that I had some 2×6’s already mounted on the roof when I purchased the camp so I just mounted the panels to those. Overall I’m very happy with the product and would recommend it to friends.

I’ve purchased two of these 400W kits and one 200W kit to use for emergency power during hurricane season. As I live in a condo I cannot use a generator during power outages for safety reasons.

As someone who has worked for a small business building and installing solar powered roof ventilator fans I recognized the quality of Renogy was good by looking at the product. I expect a lifetime of service from these panels.

The panels are normally stored, but I expect that they would have no problem meeting their 25yr lifetime with ease on a Florida roof.

I have used the panels in an 800w array with a Morningstar ProStar MPPT controller to charge a 300A 12v battery array PERFECTLY!

The power system was for amateur radio’s ARRL Field Day 2018. The system powered three 100W radios for a 24 hour simulated emergency with ease. The radios when transmitting draw up to about 350W each and 50W-60W each during recieving.

Under difficult cloud conditions I was able to bank power.

These are not state of the art panels so they are a bit bigger using standard monocrystaline design. But, as I say, “If you have the room buy regular panels cheaper and your payback time is quicker.”

If you have very limited space and a large budget then knock yourself out paying 2X-4X for THE SAME POWER in a SLIGHTLY SMALLER package.

If you have room I would do a ground based PV array instead of a roof mounted array in order to make maintenance easier and cheaper on both the roof and PV array.

Buy Renogy panels and it hard to go wrong.

My panels are attached in pairs with 36″ stainless steal piano hinges for portable operations.