BEST FLEXIBLE SOLAR PANEL CIGS YUMA 200 VS RENOGY 200 Watt

is this thin film solar panel better than a regular flexible solar panel today we'll find out we'll go over price and specs and just see which one performs better the sigx 200 will come in at 479 for a taped version or 529 pre-punch while the renergy is 329 dollars at the time of this video the Sig solar panel is extremely long at over 23 inches longer but when it comes to width it ends up being just a little over two inches skinnier than the renegie when it comes to how thick this is the new Sig solar panel is only about the size of a dime when it comes to thickness versus a renergy solar panel is about the thickness of a nickel when it comes to weight the Sig solar panel is only 6.4 pounds which is over four pounds lighter than the Renegade which when lifting both of these it's definitely noticeable the running G solar panel will use half cut cells these are more common in a lot of today's solar panels while also utilizing nine bus bars for higher voltages and better under Shady conditions this new thin film solar panel is made up of copper indium gallium am selenide or cigs for short and woven in between each one of these long cells is also 48 bypass diodes this should do exceptionally well in our shade test later now when it comes to installing flexible solar panels as they get hotter they will Flex more which if you over Flex them you can actually crack the cells versus the Sig solar panel this stays flexible whether it's hot or cold out and it doesn't really get damaged on the far left in this picture is a rigid 200 watt panel and you can see both flexible solar panels are also larger which will take up more real estate both solar panels will use 4.0 millimeter wire along with mc4 connectors and each one will have a junction box that does have a pot of material to keep all the water and the elements out a quick look at the specs before testing starts our max power voltage should be about 20.1 Volts for the renergy and 25 for the sigs our optimal current should be about 10 amps and 4 for the sigs which seems really low considering the short circuit current is 10.7 4 for their energy and over 8 on the Sig solar panel okay so testing starts so both of these have been out here 15 to 20 minutes and with a Sig so long and flexible it was hard to really mount it on anything so I could get these at optimal angle versus a rigid one is a little bit easier to mount but anyway they're under the same test conditions so we'll see how well they do now when it comes to standard test conditions that's not really optimal or real world because you're supposed to have over a thousand Watts meter Square for light coming in on the panel and also 77 degrees it's about 95 degrees right now which it will get hotter and our light meter should read about 950 later okay lots of information to cover but just to show you the temperature of the panel so it's about 96 degrees 123 on the concrete there and in the shade 93 there so we'll check out the panel and see how hot it is so the renergy panel coming in about 123 120 and 125 so maybe an average of 123 degrees depending on kind of where we point the gun at and take a look at the sigs so 134 136 look at that so A good 10 degrees hotter overall I would say at least for an average pretty hot okay open circuit voltage test for the renergy coming in right about 22 volts okay do the Sig solar panel and here we are here's the sigs coming in at 28.21 so now overall I do expect this to do better because look at the sheer size of it it's bigger there's more area so technically it should do better at least that's what I'm assuming okay so we're going to use these load testers first and then we'll confirm our test after this so these are going to put a load on each one of these panels kind of like a solar charge controller but we're going to be doing it manually and we'll see how much power we can suck out of them and we'll use a power station later just to kind of confirm after this test okay just to show you how this works a top one will be sigs this bottom one will be the renergie and I'm going to boost this up to 80 Watts that'll be that top number up there the yellow is the voltage coming in right now so boost this up to 80 and we'll move along faster as we get going okay so now we're looking at the Sig solar panel 28 volts and we're going to turn both of these on and get them going and then we'll increase our load and see how well they do until they kind of stop putting out voltage this is the renergy one 20.5 volts and 3.8 amps and and sorry about bumping the camera it is a tight space okay I bumped 120 watts this is the Renegy and now we'll take a look at the sigs and you can see our voltage is definitely quite a bit higher just like in our initial test so we're going to go ahead and bump this up again okay so this is the renergy solar panel we'll bump this up to 145. and still holding and because we don't have optimal angles and also the correct amount of sun I think we'll get about 160 170 out of these at Max we'll see just because of the angle and everything but holding 145 and this is back to the renergie so we'll bump this up another five we'll just kind of keep ticking away but I did want to show you the temperature of the panels while they are under a load okay so 124 on the concrete and here's the Renegade panel it was 123 remember now look how hot it is because it's been heat soaking out here in the sun 141 139 back there that could be just as it reflects or bounces off but come back up here 136 138 141 so that's about what the sigs was doing so let's check the sigs and 139 138 141 so check that out they both kind of equalized as far as the temperature so now they're both pretty much you know acclimated to the outside temp so okay back to the load testers this is the Sig solar panel I just put it a 150 still holding now we'll come down here and take this up so 145 Watts 18 volts 8 amps slowly take this up to 150 and one for oh look at that okay so it did drop off I was wondering when we were going to get close to drop off on this so about 140 647 in front of the renegie okay back to the cigs so still going at 153 we're gonna just keep going until it drops off which we'll see if we can get to 160. and this is now about 10 watts more than the renigy and still holding 23 volts now almost 24 6.6 amps and keep ticking up and still going actually pretty impressive it's still holding so I kind of would have assumed it would have dropped off by now but just to kind of look down there but and we'll do the renegie one more time just to make sure and there it goes now it's dropped off so about 163 164 let's just load it up again real quick just to make sure we get our numbers so we can test again later to confirm and yeah right about 163-ish maybe 162 if we were to hold there and back to the Renegade just to try it again just to double check we stock about 146 or so so there's 145 and dropping off so 144ish I guess and not bad okay to confirm our numbers this is a Sig solar panel into an ecoflow power station with a built-in solar charge controller we're about 162 163 so not bad and now the renegie and we're about 143 144 and 141 so overall pretty darn close now we'll do a shade test okay so for our shade test we're going to use this box and do it a couple different ways instead of laying it on the cells itself and making them totally blacked out that's not exactly accurate because even when shaded ambient light can still hit the cells so we're gonna do this a couple different ways just adding more shade as we go and then we'll see what happens so right now for just a little bit of shade we were at about 141 with no shade and then we were at 133 so here's a little bit more shade on the solar panel and there's kind of a big drop off there at only 50 Watts and now here's covering up this is about 30 percent of the panel covered up with shade but still some ambient light hits it right so let's see where this goes right about 14 watts so pretty much almost a dead panel we'll add a little bit more over there and see what happens okay with my amazing construction abilities I built this colossal thing to provide a little bit more shade so overall we'll see what kind of output we get now and look at that so now a dead panel okay now we'll see what kind of hype we get out of this sig solar panel because it's supposed to do good in the shade so Baseline test about 155. and now that same kind of a sliver test that we started with and now about 145 so very much the same as the renergie now this we are about what 50 Watts with the renergy solar panel so see what we got here and look at that double actually so pretty good all right so this is that same one where we had a dead panel with the Renegy let's see what we got now and take a look down here look at that 65 Watts still wow that's actually pretty cool because I thought it would be a lot lower so we'll try some more okay I added a little bit more down there just to kind of split the shade difference at the top half in the bottom so and now look at this almost exactly the same if not a little bit better so 75 Watts pretty cool so let's go ahead and add just another piece and we'll just right there perfect and let's see what happens so 75 Watts down to wow look at that 70 Watts still it didn't really even change so that's pretty cool so I'm gonna add a little bit more shade and then we'll come back so right about 70. all right I'm gonna stick that there right there perfect and check this out there is still wattage coming out of here 32 watt steel which I mean I kind of thought it would have been dead but still 32 that's that's pretty amazing so all right let me just go all the way across like that just that way we get the whole side huh look at that it actually went up that's crazy okay hold on real quick let me add a little bit more and see what happens here okay so I'm assuming this is dead right that should be so I haven't looked I swear we'll take a look together here we go oh my gosh look at that 24 Watts still wow that is just kind of crazy because it should be dead foreign okay I left a sliver just to see what happens but now all right finally okay it's completely dead even though there's a sliver showing but still that's impressive I decided just to cover up about 40 of the panel just to see and look at that it comes back to life so overall this is pretty cool because I mean this opens a lot of options for people but I want to show you one more thing so what we're looking at is a thermal image and we're looking for hot spots and this is a Sig solar panel and right now we see a hot spot at the junction box this is because it's under a load and this is perfectly normal but we don't see any dots on the actual panel itself so let me come over here all these orange dots will go away now that we focus in if we see this one right here this is a true hot spot from either a damaged cell from shipping it could have possibly been me from setting it out here and flexing it too much but that right there could be either a cracked bus bar or a damaged cell I don't actually know unless I really look at it but this kind of gives you an idea of what we're looking at here so far there is no damage or hot spots at least on this solar panel but wait there's more now I was cleaning up and I noticed the heat coming off of this panel even after I put it in here for a couple minutes been maybe five minutes in here look at this 118 degrees now look at this one only 86 because it's so much thinner it can dissipate the heat much faster so just wanted to show you that I thought it was cool okay don't go away yet but I will admit that I am pretty impressed with the solar panel that you can roll up into a box and it puts out good output not to mention how much output it puts out when it's in the shade that's a mouthful but I did talk to the company because I said hey I'm actually pretty impressed with the panel if you guys would like to offer a discount for viewers because it is a premium price for this thing compared to other flexible panels out there and the renergy panels are still good they've performed well but this is actually quite an improvement but again a premium price so they did offer discount codes you'll see those in the links down below so make sure you check that out so you can save a little money if you want to plan on buying one of these but other than that I hope you guys liked the video let me know what you think in the comments

Channel: JOHNNY'S WEEKENDS

Views: 2,842

Keywords: Solar, solar panel, cigs, cigs Yuma, 200 watt, flexible, flexible solar panel, renogy, bougerv, rv, rv solar, rv solar panels, off grid, boondocking, grid power, HQST, Qcell

Id: xyg0oWBcRfM

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 13 2023