And now for Solar, I unfortunately had a cloudy day but here are some results. I used a 40 watt and a 20 watt cell (4 ea 5 watt)for the test. Since being a cloudy day I thought should I wait for the sun to come back out before doing the test and in the real world you may not have that option for days or weeks so off to the test. The 20 watt cell did not power either my HCX or the Dakota, which leads me to believe it may be going bad. I checked it for static voltage at over 6 volts and I know from the past on cloudy days it has powered my HCX before. I have been using the 20 watt to keep my truck battery charged when in storage and it does a good job at that, it stays in over 120 degree heat daily running 24/7 so some of the cells may have gone bad over time. I powered up the HCX and Dakota with the 40 Watt cell with no issues and works great, unfortunately I could not tell you the minimum due to I don't have a 30 watt and the 20 watt is questionable. I would probably say the 30 Watt should handle it but I'm not sure, 40 watt no problem. In Lew of the newer equipment coming out I need to raise the minimum above 20 watts, now it you use a built in battery/solar charger that charges a internal battery when not in use would work and have a lighter/smaller footprint, but what if the battery fails.

Any way here are some pictures of both the units running full power with no batteries.


Cloudy Day