Solar or Mains — 4G CCTV Cameras That Run on Both Power Sources: A Sourcing Guide for Distributors

Yes — the same camera runs on solar and on wired power

Short answer, for anyone who searched exactly this: a 4G LTE solar security camera is a battery camera with a charging input. The solar panel is one way to fill that battery. A wired supply from the grid is another. Across the 49 AOV models in the SolaGuard catalogue you can mount the panel and nothing else, feed the camera from a mains adapter and nothing else, or connect both — letting the panel carry the site on clear days while the wired line covers a week of rain. It is the same unit either way. There is no separate "solar version" and "electric version" to stock, and no firmware mode to switch.

For an importer or distributor, that is the commercially important part. One line of inventory answers two completely different site surveys: the farm gate 400 metres from the nearest pole, and the warehouse loading bay that has sockets everywhere but no network cabling and no appetite for trenching.

It also helps to separate the two problems the product solves, because buyers routinely conflate them. The 4G radio solves the data path — no WiFi, no NVR run, no switch. The power source is an independent question. Plenty of sites have mains power and still no usable network at the camera position; plenty of others have neither. Dual-power hardware means your sales team does not have to resolve the power question before quoting.

What "both" means electrically

The battery sits in the middle of everything

The camera never runs directly off the panel or directly off the adapter. Both are charge sources feeding the internal pack, and the pack runs the camera. Three consequences follow, and all three are worth putting in front of a buyer:

1. A power cut does not stop recording. In markets where the grid drops for hours, a wired conventional camera goes dark exactly when an incident is most likely. A dual-power battery camera keeps running on its pack and keeps writing to the card. In much of Latin America and rural Vietnam this is the strongest argument in the whole pitch, and it is a side effect of the architecture rather than an add-on.
2. Undersized solar is no longer a failure state. A courtyard that gets four hours of sun in the wet season is a marginal solar-only site. With a wired input available, the same site becomes an easy sell — the panel simply reduces draw instead of being the sole supply.
3. Deployment can be staged. The end user can hang the camera on a mains adapter this week and add the panel when the mount is fabricated, with no reconfiguration and no re-pairing.

The two power pairings in the range

The AOV catalogue pairs a battery with a panel in two combinations: 8000mAh with an 8W panel, and 20000mAh with a 15W panel. The larger pairing is the one to quote for busy scenes, long nights, heavy night-vision use and low-sun regions. The smaller pairing is for open-sky mounts — and, critically for your margin, for any site where a wired line is available as backup. Where mains is present, the cheaper pairing is very often sufficient, and the difference between them is real money at volume.

Avoid quoting runtime figures. Actual endurance depends on event volume, night-vision hours, LTE signal quality and upload settings, and a number printed on a proposal becomes a warranty claim later.

Three site patterns, and what to quote for each

Matching the pattern to the catalogue

All four AOV series are 2K, IP66, and take a microSD card up to 128GB. They differ in lens count, battery and panel:

Three models that cover most opening orders: SG-C41G-10T66-V1 as the entry single-lens unit; SG-D42G-10F66-V1 for dual-lens coverage on wired or good-sun sites; and SG-D42G-15F66-V1 where the 20000mAh / 15W pairing is needed for solar-only autonomy. The wider catalogue runs to 150 SKUs, with wholesale prices quoted per order — see the full range for the non-AOV lines.

AOV means Always-On Video: continuous 24/7 recording held at low standby power through AI scene analysis, rather than PIR-triggered clips. It is an industry-generic term, not a SolaGuard trademark. The distinction matters in a dual-power conversation, because PIR cameras miss slow movement and anything outside the trigger zone, and a buyer who has been burned by that is precisely the buyer who asks whether the camera can also be wired.

What dual power changes in your BOM, install and after-sales

The adapter is a regional item, not part of the camera. Plug standard, and whether the unit ships with an adapter at all, are things to fix in writing on the proforma before the first container. Do not assume.

Outdoor wired runs need protection. The camera body is IP66, but the joint where an indoor-style adapter meets an outdoor cable is not part of that rating. Specify a weatherproof enclosure for the connection on any external mains install and price it into the kit.

Installation stays fast. Mount, insert the SIM and the microSD, connect the panel or the adapter, and the camera is running — 5 to 10 minutes per unit. There is no NVR to commission and no cable pull, which is what makes multi-camera rollouts viable for two-person crews.

After-sales gets easier, which is underrated. The most common solar-only support ticket is not a defective camera; it is a mount in the wrong place. With a wired input, your technician has a decisive diagnostic: plug it in, and if the camera comes back, the fault is siting and not hardware. That single test turns a return into a site visit.

Sourcing terms

Hardware comes from Shenzhen Leksell, established 2012, TÜV Rheinland certified, with CE, FCC and RoHS. Resolution is 1080p–2K as standard; 4K exists only as a custom or OEM build.

• MOQ: 10 units for a trial order, 100 for OEM/ODM.
• Margin: 20% from around 10 units, 30% from around 50.
• Lead time: samples 7–10 days by air; bulk 25–40 days by sea; 7–10 business days within Vietnam from the Ho Chi Minh City office.
• OEM / private label: available on all models, including the 49 AOV SKUs — logo, packaging and app branding.

Pricing tiers and payment terms are on the wholesale page, and territory and stocking arrangements run through the dealer programme.

Five questions to settle before you commit

1. Does the adapter ship in the box, and in which plug standard — per market, in writing?
2. Which battery and panel pairing does each SKU in your opening order carry? Two of the four series differ on exactly this point.
3. What is the connector on the charging input, so your team can source cable locally instead of importing it?
4. Do you need OEM at 100 units now, or a 10-unit trial on stock branding first?
5. Which SKUs stay in stock for your market, and which are made to order on the 25–40 day sea window?

Quantity pricing, custom configurations and lead times for a specific order always come from a person — not from a page and not from a chatbot. Send your model list and target volumes to info@solaguard.net and you will get a quote against the actual catalogue, with the battery, panel and power options confirmed per SKU.