Opaque solar panels🙄

[Grubscrew]

Time ticks by and two years or so after the solar panel install I was surprised, but not overly, at the opaque sheen the panels on the roof have developed.

Wind back the clock…..I put some flexi panels and made a super job of then too..

To be fair, they were not hugely expensive, but guess this is what happens. They produced a reasonable amount of power all three , but no way the 160max per panel claimed , I found after the opaque sheen developed, the output was reduced.

Incidentally, I’ve a solar pond fountain , the small 4” square panel was also opaque. It produced 6” of verticle shower. Clean the panel with wd40 not really advised, but hey) but the panel then proceeded to a 9” verticle shower, all in the space of 2 minutes, full sun all day.
Back to the van. The old flexi ones are coming off soon, the second pic doesn’t quite show the extent , so be replacing them with 170watt x3 .

 

[Scottish Scrutineer]

I clean the panels on our house every couple of years, just to remove some of the atmospheric fall out from the glass.

 

[Tor]

They look like flexible panels, if so they all seem to go that way, though not a fix you may have to consider changing them to regular type panels.

I got mine from Craig Solar which were vastly more expensive than I wanted to pay, however, they were exactly the size I needed for my roof so I had to suck it up.

 

[S-M]

You can buff them with polish, i used g3 cutting compound on my transporter ones and used to get around a year from each buff.

 

[Grubscrew]

I ended up ripping them all off, and replaced them with some rigid panels with a greater out put.
Using the stainless Unistrut as a chassis and taped aluminium angle to reduce the galvanic reaction between the two different metals.

 

[Tor]

Nicely done

 

[Lebowski]

It seems flexibele solar panels have a limited life span of maybe maximum five years, it makes sense to use normal framed panels to circumvent these limitations.

I'm picking up a set of Craig Solar soon as they're the only panels that are 1470mm wide and this means I can fit four panels behind each other and still have room for a Maxxfan Deluxe.

I have a custom designed roof rack on the way with a spoiler and room to raise two Maxxfan Dome fans. Delivery is planned on september.

Price is easily forgotten after the quality is constant.

If I could give advice to anyone, I'd never bother with flexible panels. They have a weight advantage (3kg vs 10kg) but they're just not as good as firm panels.

 

[S-M]

There are a new type of flexible panel with a different coating which is apparently supposed to prevent the UV clouding issue, unfortuantly my new type ones have only been on 6 months so it remains to be seen if it works or not, my old transporter ones still worked fine with a yearly buff but the TGE is a bit higher and i dont fancy the job if they do, the finish is kind of textured on the new ones.