Semi flexible solar panels

G'day Alby,

A mate of mine has fitted them to the roof of his Kimberley Karavan and is happy with them.

AFAIK their performance specs are similar to conventional glass-enclosed panels. The big plus with this outfit is they will make panels to custom dimensions so you can get them made to fit just about anywhere.

You raise an interesting issue about heat. This is of interest to me too as I am about to do what my friend has done, but I will be mounting them on white fibreglass. With no ventilation to the rear of the panels I'm also wondering how much heat will affect them.

The aluminium to which you are going to mount your panels will get hot in the sun, hotter than my fibreglass, but being reflective, may not get as hot as the black panels, so some of the panel heat may get drawn away from the panels by the ali roof. Or may not - I'm guessing a bit here. My fibreglass roof will not draw much heat away at all.

I've decided not to worry about it. I need the panels, I need them flat on the roof so that's where they're going and I'll just accept whatever output they give me. Like yours, they will just be supplementary.

For info, another mate of mine, an engineer, has water-cooled the rooftop solar panels on his house. His system is computer-monitored and controlled. He gets at least a 20% improvement with the water on.

Cheers

Hi Alby,

The semiflexible panels are reckoned to be about 20% less efficient than the glass mounted ones. Their advantages may well outweigh this though depending on your setup.

Temperature does reduce efficiency significantly and rigid panels are best mounted so that air flow can cool the back of the panel. In the heat of mid summer I would expect to lose another 10-15% if these flexible ones were mounted directly on an aluminium substrate exposed to the sun.

HTH

John