Canadian Tire Eliminator Solar Solution

If you live in Canada, you know Canadian Tire. Even small towns like Powell River have their own store. It's where you go for everything from gardening supplies to small appliances, oh, and of course, tires.

Lately, we've been using two Canadian Tire Eliminator products for extra power at our off the grid cabin, two 15 watt solar panels and a PowerBox 800 battery pack.

One nice thing about this 12 volt, 15 watt solar panel is its quick-connect plug that mates directly with the PowerBox. But it also has DC clips to use to charge other types of batteries. The regular price is $99 CAD, but watch for occasional sales. We mounted our panel on the same pole as our wind generator. At the bottom of the pole is a wooden case to house the battery pack during charging. This protects it from the elements (we do get our share of rain).

The PowerBox 800 is the most powerful of the four models. It has AC outlets and 28 amp-hours of stored energy when fully charged. There's also a built-in radio, light and alarm clock. If you want to use it as a booster pack for starting or charging a vehicle, it comes with its own cables. In addition to the direct connection for an Eliminator solar panel, it comes with an AC charger.

UPDATE: We've now owned two PowerBox 800s with problems. The first lasted two years before the inverter died. Last night, it's replacement had a malfunction in the charging system. Because they are sealed units, they can't be repaired. We couldn't find the receipt, but took it back to Canadian Tire anyway. Because we used our Canadian Tire credit card, they were able to search their computer records. They found it and the full amount was credited to our card without question. That's GREAT customer service! We still like our Eliminator solar panels, but have switched to a Nautilus Booster Pack. It doesn't include an internal inverter, but we feel that is one less thing to go wrong. We can easily plug our DC to AC car adapter inverter into the built-in DC outlet to run cabin devices. Plus, it gives us five more (33) amp-hours of stored energy. Regular price is $169 CAD but we got ours on sale for only $99, a 40% savings. I'll keep you posted about it's performance. -- Margy