Cheap VS Expensive Solar Panels | 12v Touring | Project Cyan

tell you what it's a little bit worrying when you get something in the mail and it looks like this good a guy's trust me to pick a day where there's no Sun to do a video about solar panels so this morning I woke up it was beautiful blue skies I have no idea what's happened but anyway let's talk about solar panels so this was the first solar panel that I got I've had a couple over the years so this is a projector unit it's a foldable solar panel ad what cost me 400 bucks at the time and that's done really really well it's cool because you know you can set that up in the Sun you can have your car in the shade which is always a bonus then I went on to this one here so this is 130 watt solar panel it's just a cheap one I think it cost me a hundred and seventy bucks at the time so I had this permanently mounted to my last car for about a couple of years and that went pretty well as well so the time came to figure out what I was gonna do with project sign as far as solar goes so I decided to go for semi-flexible solar panels so this one here is from i-tech world in Burswood so what I decided to do is to go for a 100 watt but two of them and I was just about to buy them when I was like you know what what if I get a expensive one and a cheap one just so I can compare them so this one here cost me three hundred dollars delivered there so nice and light when you compared into these ones here so that one there should be a hundred watt panel let me just double check that I wish I could learn to read well that sucks because it actually doesn't say anything about how many watts or how many amps it actually produces so we're just assumed that that's 100 watt panel for the moment because I don't really know what it is so that one cost me $300 from i-tech world and Burswood and then this one here 99 bucks delivered from Sonia and I got to say so far the winner is sunny because the packaging is actually quite solid so good job there guys today Oh mate there's even suction cups look at that alright so then we got that panel there from Sun Yee so I'm very curious to see how these will compare so I'm just gonna have a quick look at them myself because it's the first time I've ever seen them I just have a look see what the differences are and go from there so I just wanted to point out this is the fixed solar panel that I had for a couple of years so like I said this panel didn't cost me very much but you can really tell that it's not the best quality panel so there's marks here and they're definitely not on the outside so they're actually inside the panel and you can see there's like lines across there I'm not really sure if the camera's gonna pick it up but all through here you can just see lines there and you can just tell by looking at the panel that it's not the best panel on the market by far this is a pain in the butt to unwrap the general saying goes with this kind of stuff it all comes out of the same factory well when you look at these through solar panels I'll definitely say they haven't come out of the same factory this one here's got a very reflective surface on it here this one's got a very matte surface across it this one's got the little lines the expect to see in the solar cells this one hasn't got any of that the sizes are a little bit different this one's a bit longer so I'm very curious to see how these two panels perform against each other so this solar panel here this is a sunny $99 solar panel this one's actually got the maximum power current which is actually how many amps you're gonna be able to possibly get out of the panel so that's five point six eight now I'll just show you the other panel quickly so this is the three hundred dollar I check well with solar panel and when I look at the specs is actually nothing about how many amps or how many watts it actually puts out which is a little bit disappointing because you generally expect to see that on a back of a panel so I have no idea what's going on there it's very weird so they use a semi flexible solar panel so you may be wondering what's the flexibility actually like well that's panel here is a very very flexible I mean you look at that how cool is that that's some pretty good flex the Sun ye $99 solar panel it gets really tight there so just had some cracking this I don't know if this has that got that much flexibility it doesn't look like it's damaged ooh it's definitely not as flexible as a 300 dollar solar panel so solar panels like this generally come with PV connectors well there's nothing wrong with these really they just they're just yeah just don't like them virtually that that's all it comes down to so I'm not gonna use them so if you just give me a minute guys I'll just rewire these in to my Anderson plugs actually I'll just quickly show you guys what I've figured out my Enderson plugs because I wanted to be able to connect both panels at once I'll just show you quickly so on top of the car this is the solar input on the roof rack for the solar panels this is what they're gonna hit get hooked up to and I was trying to figure out a way that I could have either one solar panel two solar panels but I still wanted to be able to have the option of only having one or having both so I figured out if I make a double adapter at the end of the solar panel lead I can actually hook that in there say if I just want to run this solar panel I can hook that in like that if I want to run both well I got a do just click that in like that and that way both solar panels are hooked up then if I just want to run this one you know you plug that in like normal so that was the solution I came up with so hopefully it works out I guess we'll see howdy guys just give me a minute to make up the new ends for the solar panels and then hopefully the Sun will come out some tongs so we can actually test the things tell you what you never do a good soda unless you forget to put the heat shrink on guarantee every time you forget to put the heat shrink on your solar job is just gonna be mint the rain is seriously not playing ball today so the rains finally cleared up don't know what's going on with the weather this year it's all over the shop I've got the Anderson plugs on both of the solar panels so they're ready to roll so as soon as we get a blue patch of sky I'll chuck them up on the roof and we can test them out but I might just quickly tell you guys why should decided to go with the semi-flexible solar panels well pretty much one of the reasons is the weight the only way they weigh under two kilograms each which is really light weight and the other reason is I didn't want to have a permanent setup so with these I can virtually with the roof rack I've got I can pretty much cable tie them anywhere I want so if I'm going away for a month up north I'll probably have my second spare tire up here my Mac shacks some other bits and bobs I can virtually put the panel's wherever they fit otherwise sound a couple of weeks I'm going sea kayaking down south I'll have my sea kayak that'll take up one whole side of the car now if you had firmly mounted roof right I mean solar panels chances are the sea kayak will be blocking them and you're not going to get as much output well with these I can have one panel here cable tie the other panel there and my match takes up the back and everything will be in the Sun and everything will work so that's pretty much why my setup changes a lot so this way nothing's permanent and I if I only want to run one panel I can just run one panel I don't have to always have to so that's pretty much why just a flexibility aspect of it you get it flexibility aspect today is just not working out with getting the constant sunshine I need to do a test like this so let's jump forward to a day where there is constant sunshine all righty well we got beautiful blue skies today I'm at a beautiful location this is broken let it's been closed for two years and finally just got reopened a couple of weeks ago the Rangers just said so that's awesome so I can finally test out these solar panels because we got the weather we want so I just run you through how I'm thinking about doing this test so on the roof both of the panels are mounted on the same flat surface pretty much they're both in the full sunshine I've got two cables coming down from them so the one with this little pull thingy on it is the $99 sunny and this one is the $300 a tech old panel how am I going to actually do this test well I have a battery monitor which can monitor how many amps are going in and out of the batteries and I'll just quickly show you what our voltage and that kind of thing is looking like right now so just to run you through the voltages all right we're at twelve point seven eight volts we've got zero amps coming in and out zero what's coming in and out and last night he is 27.4 and powers and the battery is at 91% so what that means is the battery needs a charge so pretty much the DC to DC charger should be stuff in as much power as it can possibly get out of the panel's pretty much and also as far as the solar panels go on the roof they've both been in the Sun for the same amount of time and also I gave them both a clean this morning so they should be performing as well as each other so let's go ahead and plug in the $99 sunny panel and see what it does it's gonna take a couple of minutes for the DC to DC charge and realize hey there's solar coming in let's use it but we'll get there all righty we've got a reading Wow that's awesome so at the moment the $99 sunny panel is putting in six point three amps six point one nine six point three that's awesome that's absolutely kickin it a that's very cool so we know what that's putting in so let's check it on the other one and see what that does all right so just unplugged it and plug the other one in I just live for a little bit longer to see if it settles but at the moment we're putting in four point seven amps that's a massive difference I just double check to make sure I've plugged in the right one to the right one but that's definitely the itec world panel at the moment so four point seven let's plug in the Sun here again I can't believe this there we go six point two amps it's got up to the same voltage all over again I'm just gonna double check I have a plug in the right panel of the right cord again cuz I'm just gobsmacked legit six point two ants alright I'm gonna do it again so the three hundred dollar I tickled pan Oh is actually giving me four point seven amps well the 1900 dollar sunny panel plugged in identically is giving me six point two amps that's the difference of one-and-a-half amps which when you think about it adds up pretty fast so I'm using the same length of cable from each panel they're both 5 meter extension leads that I've been plugging them into and it I just can't get my head around it like that's just nuts I have left it on a little bit longer and it has gone a 4.96 so pretty much five amps so that's still a difference of one point two amps but to mix up this test even more when you get cheap solar panels you're pretty much most of the time get a really really cheap solar regulator doesn't make that much difference well I'm gonna plug this in and see what the difference is I'm really curious to see what this is going to put out as opposed to a really good MPPT decent a DC charger so let's do it just to explain what's going on under here with the cheap solar regulator I've got three Anderson plugs here one hooks up to the solar the others just straight to the battery so for the test with a cheap regulator it just goes directly to the battery and to the panel so that's all it is alright so I've plugged in the let me just check the I tech world $300 solar panel at the moment I think the solar regulators going to take a little while to kick in just like the other time all right so at the moment we've got the eye tech world solar panel plugged in and that's putting in 5.1 amps through the cheap eBay style solar regulator that you'd normally get which is pretty impressive so let's check on the $99 sunny panel and see how that goes Wow there you go so it's just stabilized and at the moment we're sitting on six amps that's just a crazy difference so even with the cheap regulator the Sonia panel is still performing so much better than the other panel I am literally mind blown I just want to talk about a B and C glass panels quickly so when I boarded that sunny panel I was a bit skeptical because it said it was an a-class panel but after using it I'd say it's definitely an a-class panel because it's working awesome so what's a big glass panel well a beef glass panel is one where there's obvious imperfections and a glass panel is perfect has no imperfections in it and then a c-class panel is one where there's imperfections in it and it doesn't perform because and technically an A and a B Class panel should work just as well as each other even there are imperfections does it really matter whether you get a B or C well you don't want a cPanel in fact I've never even seen a cPanel advertised but a or B doesn't really matter as long as they work they give you the output that they say they do who really cares all righty let's crunch some numbers so with the MPPT DC to DC charge are looking after the solar the I tech world put in four point seven one amps the sunny panel put in a weave Oh crazy one point sorry six point one nine amps that means a difference of one point to two amps that is massive so then I hooked up the cheapo eBay kind of regulator that you'd buy expecting the results to be completely different by the itec Worldpanel put in five point one amps and sunny panel put in five point nine seven amps so that's a difference of point eight one of an amp I am absolutely blown away by these results the coolest thing about doing a test like this is you don't actually know what there is also going to be until you to this stage right here the end of the video so in both cases the sunny panel absolutely trumped the are tech world panel just unbelievably even with the cheap regulator I was quite surprised how well that did so you may be wondering should I just get a cheap regulator cheap panel I'll be sorted yes or no the thing is MPPT charger or a DC to DC charger that solar ready is going to maintain your batteries a lot better because it goes through the different stages of charging PWM regulators which is normally where you get with cheap panels are pretty much an on/off switch they're not going to maintain it as well that being said if you are a bit strapped for cash just you know it's gonna it's gonna get your voltage up which is exactly what you want so if you can treat panels seem to be the way to go and then go for a decent MPPT charger and you're actually absolutely I cranked the voltage so it is interesting that it did do a little bit better the MPPT then the PWM charger but I just can't believe these results hey like I absolutely got ripped off with that I take old pad Oh anyway I'm gonna guess are in my misery but I'll see you guys in another video I

Channel: Seek Adventure

Views: 1,737,595

Rating: 4.7884774 out of 5

Keywords: Solar Panel Comparison, Solar Cells, 12v Touring Setup

Id: 3-sc4rlV93g

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 29 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/CoinIsMyDrug]

Buy "cheap shit" from China to save money and get better performance!