Amazon.com Solar Panels: Mono vs Poly - Real World Test - Worth the $$?

in today's video we're gonna test the output of polycrystalline panels versus monocrystalline so we have a renergie 100 watt monocrystalline an HQ st 100 watt monocrystalline we have a 100 watt polycrystalline by rich solar and a 100 watt polycrystalline by r energy and most advertising tells us that the monocrystalline should produce more power these are all rated for 100 watts so let's see if they actually produce the same amount of power and I've been waiting weeks for a hazy sky and today is perfect there is the perfect amount of light clouds overhead and at the end of the video we're going to test out some flexible solar panels because one of them got damaged so we're gonna see what the output is like so let's go over the prices for the renergie 100 watt mono it's going to be 120 to 130 dollars the HQs t typically cost around 100 but sometimes it's 90 dollars the rich solar polycrystalline is only $80 and the renergie 100 while polycrystalline is 110 dollars by the way this test is not sponsored by these companies I bought these with my own money from Amazon warehouses so this is exactly what you guys would get if you bought these off of Amazon this is how we're measuring the output of these panels we have a lithium iron phosphate battery connected to an MPPT solar charge controller and we have a watt meter we did not series or parallel connect any of these panels for this video so the first panel we're testing is the renergie 100 watt monocrystalline and it's producing 57 watts now we're testing the HQs t 100 watt monocrystalline and it's producing 57 watts alright guys moment of truth now the first polycrystalline test so the rich solar polycrystalline is producing 68 watts that's insane that's really good it's an $80 panel and it's producing 68 watts now we're hitting 70 watts I think that's amazing now we're testing the renergie polycrystalline is producing 70 watts so practically the same is the rich solar solar panel now it's 69 so these are pretty much the same output because it's hazy are gonna do the test all over again to make sure our results are consistent so the first panel is the renergie monocrystalline 101 it's producing 55 watts now we're testing the HQs t 100 watt monocrystalline it is producing 51 watts and I think it's because there's more clouds kind of going overhead right now because usually the r energy in the HQs t produced the same amount of power now we're testing the rich solar polycrystalline and it's producing 65 to 64 watts continuous now we're testing the renergie polycrystalline and some clouds have cleared a little bit and where it's 66 or 67 watts continuous so I don't know what they're doing but these are supposed to be more efficient and produce more when it's cloudy but the polycrystalline are producing more power now we're gonna do a shading test we're gonna cover half the solar panel and see how much power it produces so the first one is the renergie 100 watt monocrystalline and half shaded we're producing 9.6 watts of power now we are testing the HQs t partially shaded in it's 10.5 watts now we're testing the rich solar polycrystalline and it's producing twelve point eight to thirteen point two watts continuous now we are testing the renergie polycrystalline and it's producing 13.5 watts continuous so again the polycrystalline Tsar still winning this test now we are shading the top half of the mono crystalline renergie 100 watt and we're producing six to nine watts continuous now we are partially shading half of the HQs t 100 watt monocrystalline is producing 8 to 10 watts continuous now we're partially shading half of the rich solar polycrystalline and we're producing 12 to 13 watts of power now we're testing the 100 watt polycrystalline by renergie it's producing 12 to 13 watts of power continuous because these are mono crystalline and these are polycrystalline let's figure out what the surface area of each panel is so 42 inches by tene inches and this is the same for this one and this one's thirty nine and a half by twenty six and a half thirty nine and a half by twenty six and a half and just looking at them these ones are a little bit wider but these are a little bit taller so they might be around the same service area but I have a feeling that these are slightly bigger and if you multiply that out that means that each one of these panels is 819 square inches and each one of the polycrystalline is 1046 square inches so those have a larger surface area than the mono crystalline rich solar and their energy are practically the same thing I mean they look the same but one costs way less than the other so the rich solar is the clear winner out of all of these firstly eighty dollars and it produces more power than the mono crystalline in the same amount of power as one they cost thirty or forty dollars more than it so yeah rich solar is the winner here now for this test I have a damaged flexible solar panel and we're gonna see what the output is compared to the exact same panel that's undamaged and I've been using these for about a year and a half just so you know you can hear the crunchies so the undamaged flexible solar panel is producing 57 watts continuous and the damaged flexible solar panel is producing 55 watts that's incredible I was not expecting that at all I should also stress that these are high quality ones with copper back plating so if it was a cheaper panel it might be damaged easier and I dropped this thing from the roof of this RV and it cracked I mean you can hear the damage inside these cells are damaged but still producing good power also take notice that there are no bus bars in the front of each cell if you had one of those and you didn't have the copper backplate it might be damaged easier and then it wouldn't produce as much power but because of the type of flexible solar panel this is I guess they can handle some degree of damage by the way these are from ML solar in Campbell California I don't know where he sources them but he's super confident in all the cells that he sells and yeah I've always used his solar panels so yeah good stuff I could gene wise the renergie absolutely wins they have foam there's lots of space and a big rich solar is made in India and there's like this fine powder dust but the where energy is brand-spanking-new it looks really good I mean you can see in this white paper how dirty this thing came I had box on either one looks really good in high quality materials this one's rated for 1000 volts if you put them in series this one's only rated for 600 volts this one also has a thinner gauge of cable this one's really thick whenever I buy professional grade stuff it feels and looks like this so rich solar did a really good job here note the mounting holes so r energy just has this one right here we have a ground and we have this mounting hole rich solar has a lot of mounting holes and I really like that that makes it very versatile if you're building your own system the rails are a bit thicker on the Rena G you can see how wide it is here compared to here so the r energy wins in that regard but they're both single walled aluminum so they're about the same in strength probably practically the same size but the renergie is just a hair bigger it's in the rich solar it might be because of the rail it's just a little bit bigger but practically the same exact size front of these panels is practically identical they have the same number of bus bars the same number of cells and they both look really good well I was expecting the polycrystalline to do well because that's actually all I use on the roof of my RV currently but I wasn't expecting them to do that well and years ago I had a polycrystalline in a mono crystalline this was like seven or eight years ago and they produced the same amount of power and so I used to tell people guys they produce the same and no one would believe me all of these monocrystalline panels they always say o higher efficiency but they don't tell you how much more efficient they are as I also did the calculation for the efficiency for its size and it was practically the same number but one produces more power for the money and the polycrystalline just blew the competition away and we also learned their energy is more overpriced than anything else out there and they're rich solar makes an awesome panel I feel kind of bad though because in the last video we're doing the mono crystalline and everybody was like yes the HQs t mono crystalline is amazing but i didn't tell anybody that all i use personally on my rig polycrystalline and then when we test the polycrystalline x' they do better than I ever anticipated them doing so yeah guys you do not need to spend more money for monocrystalline panels buy the polycrystalline panels and buy the rich solar ones it's a high quality panel if you guys disagree with me please let me know in the comments below if you think something was wrong please let me know and if you're new here please check out my book it's number one and number two bestseller for solar energy on amazon.com and I also have a website mobile - solar power com I have all of my favorite components and solar panels and batteries and how to build batteries in so much more if you're new here please check it out I update it literally every single day with and this book is so useful that I even use it because I calculated all the few sizes out in the wire gauges so super useful to have laying around and it's super cheap so yeah please check it out if you guys can in the amount of people that return this book is like one in a thousand so it's really good people that get this like it and if you already have my book please leave a review it is so hard to get reviews I will sell like 10,000 of these and I'll get like two reviews so please please please leave a review if you bought this book so thank you so much for watching if you guys did not like anything or if you disagree with some of my results please let me know in the comments section below and yeah I'll talk to you guys later bye

Channel: DIY Solar Power with Will Prowse

Views: 426,021

Rating: 4.9215403 out of 5

Keywords: offgrid solar, rv solar, van solar, cabin solar, diy solar power, monocrystalline vs polycrystalline, solar panel review

Id: dZ_jrSAk-DU

Length: 10min 14sec (614 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2019