Which Solar Panel kit to buy?

[GCecchetto]

Well, now that I see Unisolar is potentially gone, I guess I should retract my recommendation. I'm not worried about the warranty issue but it would be bummer if no buyer is found for the company as I think it's a great option for high mobility off road expedition vehicles.

[GCecchetto]

Any chance you have a photo of how you put the wires through the roof and where you routed them?

I would recommend something like this for the roof penetration.

http://http://www.westmarine.com/web...7#.T9OAktVYukE

[pods8]

their normal max voltage is 15.4 volts, in my dimly lit living room at night with one third of the panel covered I was measuring 4 volts of the panel.

Not sure what that says in your mind, 4V will do absolutely nothing for you in terms of charging. The panel needs to put out enough voltage to actually be in a charging range otherwise nothing is going to actually flow to your batteries, more of an FYI in case you didn't realize.

[GCecchetto]

All it means to me is that in extremely dim lighting, with part of the panel covered, when a conventional panel would be doing nothing it was still producing almost a third of it' normal max voltage. I've talked to people running two of the 136 watt panels that are still getting over 80 watts, which is enough to charge batteries, in pooring rain. This is my last post in this thread as it seams likely to become a flamefest and I've no need for the negativity.

[zidaro]

heres how i mounted mine!

heres page 5 of my build where the solar install starts:

http://www.expeditionportal.com/foru...n-Tundra/page5

again, flawless so far and i have been flogging it both on dirt and power consumption

[pods8]

All it means to me is that in extremely dim lighting, with part of the panel covered, when a conventional panel would be doing nothing it was still producing almost a third of it' normal max voltage. I've talked to people running two of the 136 watt panels that are still getting over 80 watts, which is enough to charge batteries, in pooring rain. This is my last post in this thread as it seams likely to become a flamefest and I've no need for the negativity.

But a third of the voltage is still fundamentally nothing when it comes to actually charging the batteries, I do hope you realize that. Watts alone aren't what it takes to charge a battery, watts are comprised of volts X amps. If the volts are not higher than the battery (plus a little more) there will not be any motive force to push any amps into a battery.

No flame fest, I'm just not seeing the value in the examples you're trying to provide. In reality they may not fall off much in real light, I don't know and that would be nice for the user if so.

Actually I was curious so I just googled quick on it, unisolar uses bypass diodes to go around shaded cells so they have better tolerance for shading however the links are saying once you hit 15-20% shading you've essentially lost panel output because the voltage has dropped too much to effectively charge. With a large footprint panel this could be an issue for some users. That's all, know your product and use it appropriately.