Tool Review: 10-Watt Solar Pulse Solar Charger Maintainer, No. SP-10

 The PulseTech 10-Watt Solar Pulse Solar Charger Maintainer, No. SP-10, is designed to eliminate jump starts, increase battery power and extend battery life by returning older batteries to like-new condition. The SP-10 uses high-frequency pulse technology with microprocessor-controlled intelligent charging algorithms to charge, condition and maintain vehicle and equipment batteries by up to three times. The SP-10 works with all types of 12V batteries, including conventional flooded, gel, AGM and VRLA. When mounted on a vehicle or equipment, the SP-10 is an entirely automatic battery conditional and charge/maintenance system. The SP-10 comes with a five-year limited warranty.

The Review

For Chris Warren of Griffith Pavement in Columbus, Ohio, it's essential to keep technicians productive during down times, and by using the PulseTech SP-10 Solar Charger Maintainer he says he was able to do just that.

Warren used the SP-10 to monitor four batteries on a Condor chassis, including three parallel and one GM industrial pony motor used as the power take-off for the application. This allowed technicians at Griffith Pavement to do other productive tasks instead of having to monitor the batteries’ state of charge.

"Normally, during this time of year we would have someone switching a battery charger from truck to truck, charging batteries every few days," Warren says. "While we still were doing this for other fleet vehicles, we were able to keep hands off this piece of equipment. We have several pieces of equipment that are temperature-sensitive, and they have indoor storage spaces; this piece is parked outside 99 percent of the time."

For this specific application, Warren modified the battery lead to include the pony motor battery by adding a jumper to the additional battery. Then, he installed the solar panel on the boom of the equipment, facing south and in a vertical position so snow wouldn’t accumulate.

The products comes in a labeled box, with a plastic bag containing the leads and converter and an instruction sheet. Once the SP-10 is set up and installed, it's hands off, Warren says.

"Being able to set it up and walk away is fantastic," Warren says. "We struggle sometimes to get across to our employees that attempting to use equipment that doesn’t have properly charged batteries can affect several other people’s productivity, not just their own."

Overall, Warren says he appreciates the ease of use, simple operation and results of the SP-10 Solar Charger Maintainer.

"The batteries stayed charged with no outside influence needed," he says.