Flexible Solar Panels - General thoughts ?

[Lance]

I realise flexible panels have been discussed in earlier threads and are currently mentioned in the Lithium Battery, thread but I thought it a good idea to put your pros & cons, thoughts and observations in one place.

What is the general consensus on the flexible panels ?
Have they improved since the early releases ?
Are they likely to be around id 5-10yrs or will they be proven a dud ?
How do they cope with heat dissipation, is that a serious issue being adhered direct to a roof panel ?

Who has them installed, and what is/are your experiences with them ?

Lots of questions, I suppose and lots of answers.
Just curious at this stage.

[Mrcoolabah1au]

Tell me more ?

[bagmaker]

there are 200w ones available from the research of Dibsy -seem good to me
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/200W-12V-Fle ... SwJ7RYSOgG

But I look forward to his trials as the earlier panels have had some bad press from members on CF.
As T1 says, a written warranty would be good............

[native pepper]

In ten years time, we can expect solar panels will be in the paint you apply to your E car and provide many times more energy than currently. As for MH's, who knows as fossil fuels may be very scarce, expensive and we may have to refit our drive systems to electrics and install the looming ultra capacitors for storage, instead of lifepo4.

[Kappy]

Lance

Seems as though we have the same question.

I started a thread along the same lines prior to seeing yours.

Now that I'm gonna change my panels from 24 volt to 12 volt.

Now comes the daunting taste of panel selection.

Do I go rigid like here http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/100W-12V-SOL ... SwIgNXtVPa

Or semi flexible
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/100W-Flexibl ... Sw8gVX3pHi
or
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/100W-12V-Fle ... SwojRYShVK
Would you care to share what brand you have and maybe your secret mounting .

I have doscovered some bold claims mainly " Powerful Cell 25Yr output Warranty" is this realistic and what does it actually mean?

A number of panels have in their specs "MAXIMUM SYSTEM VOLTAGE 1000 VOLTS"
Can someone enlighten me?

Cheers
Kappy

[Lance]

Gooday Kappy.
I don't have flexible panels.
I have a Hiace campervan and when I decided to go with solar I did consider flexible panels but went off the idea after reading some bad reports of their longevity.
I ended up going with 140w of std panels set into aluminium angle.
They seem to be doing the job well so far.

My reason for starting this thread was curiosity as to whether overall quality had improved.
I would like to add an extra panel across the front of the fiberglass bubble but I'm not sure an adhered panel would be a good idea.
I won't be doing anything in the short term but thought some discussion may help others.

[Noggins]

I had some flexible panels in the past.
I would be Extremely wary of any that are aluminium backed and come from EcoWorthy, sent from Riverwood NSW. ( supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread )
The set I had only lasted 6 months and it was dismaying in the least as panel after panel failed and left me with the option of running the genni or to a CP to recharge the batteries.
Try to get any warranty from them without threatening to go Legal !!!!!!

The cheapo's get an opaque film over them that you have to polish off very month or so , so careful observation is required if you want max output.
I still have 1 small flexible that has a sole purpose of running a fan at the Engel, so it stays .... for now.



Ron

[T1 Terry]

Testing

[BernieQ2]

Riverwood NSW used to be called Herne Bay ,
I know a useless bit of info .
Bernie .

[T1 Terry]

Seem to be having problems being T1 Terry.... the story of my life on the interweb really So I'll try my secret identity..... bugga that didn't work either


Tried to reply to this yesterday and again earlier today and for some reason I couldn't get the forum page up again, but Bruce has fixed it now so you will have to suffer more of my long posts


My experiences with flexible solar panels..... it has been a rather expensive learning process. Out of all the semi flexible panels we have installed there have been 3 different types.
The first were Q Solar, only flexible when warm to hot, tended to curl up if not well attached, became too expensive and the QC was terrible with one delivery having to be replaced due to thin corners one side and thick the other resulting in panel fracturing during transport, we didn't even get to install them. Out of the 50 or so we installed none have failed though, but some became unattached and one lot were replaced with rigid panels at the owners request as a result of a scare campaign on another forum by the arm chair experts
The second type were the plastic backed panels sold by Solar4RV and later panels from the same manufacturer. This was the start of the rather expensive learning process, how to install them. Direct glueing to the roof is definitely out, very high heat transfer causing fibreglass delamination and/or extreme heat transfer inside the RV. Fortunately we detected this problem during the preliminary testing rather than on a customers van.
The next test was gluing to coreflute, then to coreflute pieces. The coreflute pieces seemed to work ok but the panels drooped between the pieces. Glued to a solid sheet resulted in some panel failures.
Next was gluing thermoclear to the roof and then the panel to the thermoclear, some failures, individual modules cracking in some panels
The latest is a mix of different flexible panels and a different mounting method. Yet to see if the discolouring/clouding has been sorted and if the mounting method has sorted the module failures within the panels. Different expansion rates appear to have been the panel killer ripping some of the modules apart, the crack is obvious when the panel is in the heat on the roof, but removed and cooled the crack is very hard to detect.
So far so good, these new panels with the new mounted method have worked well so far.

T1 Terry