High efficiency portable solar panel with Shade Stopper Technology. 100W better than 120W?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.ย. 2024
- I'm testing the Shade Stopper high efficiency portable and folding 100W solar panel. They use some sort of half-cut solar cells in combination with bypass diodes to achieve a better power output in shading conditions. I could not quite verify that when in the shadow of a tree but the overall power output when compared to an ordinary 120W portable panel is a lot higher. We are having an 85-90% power output of this 100W panel which is much higher than I have seen with other portable panels.
Shade Stopper Solar Panel 100W with 10% discount code:
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When I first discovered the Off-Grid Garage, I dreamt of building my own home battery. Now that it's finished, I still like to watch Andy's videos, but now I'm fantasizing about emigrating to Australia. Greetings from 'over 10 months of rain' Belgium.
you have to pick your location in Australia.Down south in Oz we are desperate for more rain! Totally contrasting climate to where Andy is
Australia is as large as Europe, so pick wisely...
Feel like the "Shade Stopper" is the right name for this.
It stops charging.... When it is shaded... SHADE "OH NO" STOPP-ER! 😆
I did a review of the BigBlue Portable Solar (almost 3 years ago) that did really good as well. I was happy at the time, about 85%+ in 30c weather here in the USA.
They all do stop working. As I said the only reason my garage roof still works in these conditions is the size of it.
I bought a foldable 100Watts that did 96Watt at most in the first week. After three weeks maximum dropped to 70 ish.
But, it's better than i expected for the price.
And it never got back to 96W after this initial week?
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Nope.
Thanks Andy- we have been away in our caravan for the last ten weeks, totally relying on solar for power. Portable panels are a lifesaver when there is shade around.
You have some too, right? In addition to the ones mounted on your roof.
You go camping in the middle of Winter? I suppose, if you go up north and stay at the coast, it's a bit warmer.
@@OffGridGarageAustralia Yes, cheers Andy, we’ve been in central Western NSW for a couple of months- cold nights but mostly beautiful days when it’s not overcast. Connectivity has been pretty terrible- might have to seriously consider Starlink before our next trip. Even when there is good phone signal strength, Telstra data speeds have been absolutely awful, sometimes can’t even open an email.
We have lightweight folding panels (2 x 300w) and they do a huge amount of the “work”. Because you can point them directly at the sun, AND can follow the sun, they provide a huge percentage of our power, which is totally disproportionate to the 1kW of roof top panels. They are very often in shade from trees and are never perpendicular to the sun, (especially of course in Winter).
We never connect to mains power, and don’t carry a generator. In good solar conditions we are usually doing everything electric- and if it’s overcast we just use some LPG for cooking and diesel for heating instead of inverter power for cooking and reverse cycle A/C, to preserve batteries for fridge and lights etc.
Without your SPAT to calibrate panel position the accuracy of your measurements can be questioned. Please use a SPAT with a current cal sticker.
I actually used one but it's a bit pointless as the legs cannot be adjusted in a way to fully optimize the panel. They can be unfolded or folded, no real height adjustment.
To summarize, it is in general a really good solar panel if you completely ignore the "shade stopper" function, which absolutely does NOT work.
Some day they will make panels with "nano-inverters" where each individual cell operates independently and the panel will still be useful if any number of cells are shaded, but until then (and we're talking decades until that kind of tech is economically feasible, even though it is technically possible now) we just have to deal with placing prtable panels carefully and moving them as necessary.
It's technically possible, but heat management nightmare.
Foldable panels from these no-name fly by night brands are hit or miss. I do Amazon Vine and have reviewed a number of them. Best so far was a 120w that I got 130W out of. But I've also had some 100W ones only putting out 65W and even some RIGID 100W panels only doing 65-70W.... Big things to look for are NOT PET coated (doesn't hold up well, look for ETFE), careful with handling so you don't damage cells, especially when they're hot and a lot more bendable. Fabric wrapped ones tend to tear up easier since you're dragging them along the ground to get them setup. I think the laminated plasticy ones will hold up better. Anything over 100 be careful about wind as they become sails/kites pretty quickly, have some weights (rocks, sandbags, small children) handy to hold them down.
Great comment, thanks a lot for sharing and your tips with the weights!
last month I get a VTOMAN 220W Pro and got it at max 217W but with a 100/20 from Victron and i´m happy with that.
That sounds very good to me. Let's see if it lasts...
Higher voltage less amps for the win though. The leads are on the narrower side and over time the difference will speak for itself. Lookin forward to that next video Andy smashin a spat for ya in offgrid west aus.😂
Cheers🍺
Nice! That would be good for a camping trip!
Yes, exactly.
Andy1, just a note that you should be laying the panels in full sun to show off axis performance as this is where they are also different to the rigid panels. André in Sydney
Are you not supposed to stand them up and point towards the sun?
Of course, different directions and angles will deliver different outcomes. You could go nuts comparing panels in all sort of directions...
These are so useful when you have farm machinery that has batteries sitting for months, or alternators that are kaput.
Just be careful that the 12v regulator floats the battery properly.
Yes, the Victron MPPT is great in this perspective and has all the parameters to maintain a battery perfectly.
Thanks for sharing Andy
Thank you.
That was a very interesting workout. Thanks for sharing 😊
Thanks Clarence!
Hey Andy, could you make a video about the efficiency of the Victron. How many energy goes in vs energy out.
You might want to be more specific. Victron what? Solar panel or MPPT?
@@cyclemoto8744 I mean the Mutiplus, but MPPT would be interesting to
Sorry, Andy, but this panel was not better in shaded conditions than the other one. It might have a slightly better efficiency in full sun, but in the shade I saw no difference. The bigger one might even have advantages due to the two parallel panels.
That wasn't their claim. It's about partly shading. But even here the advantage was very minimal.
But overall better performance when considering the effective size.
I had to use a Wattstunde High Voltage panel with my Victron MPPT 100/15. Otherwise the Viccy would not startup correcly. You have the same problem. Ask the factory for a panel with a higher output voltage!
The Victron MPPT need 5V higher panel voltage over the battery voltage to start. Once started, it can go lower.
Kings/ 4WD supacentre have released a new series of solar panels that look like they came out of the same factory as this, in the last couple of weeks !!
If you are in a situation after a typhoon where power utility is cut. Such shortcomings with the panels is still a useful thing. You won't experience the benefits if you have power utility.
Yes, I think it makes a bit of a difference when you are reliant on this kind of energy source.
Thank You......! =)
Thanks.
They re using Schottky diodes in these cells. I would take the smaller one. ;-)
Yes, I believe they are all Schottkys.
Keep up the good work Andy, i have a similar foldable panel but mine is 300w.. Could you make a video on power inverters.? How would you connect a DC to AC pure sine wave converter to lifepo4 cells.? 24V - 230V with at least 2500w continu and preferably 8kw peak. I didnt have succes connecting mine, maybe because it was a cheap one from Asia.
Thank you. Wow, a 300W folding panel. That must be quite large...
Why can't you connect the inverter to your battery? Do you use a resistor when connecting it the first time? Could be that your BMS recognised it as a short.
I have tested the 'Peter' Inverter a while back, 3000W pure sine wave but 12V.
th-cam.com/video/I5rBVGSszBY/w-d-xo.html
@@OffGridGarageAustralia thans for the link, i will check it out. Actually i have 2 foldable panels, one is 400w and the other 300w. Completely unfolded they are about the size of my car. I use them together with a 575wp panel on my EV to charge a Oukitel P5000 and 8 lifepo4 cells, then charge my EV with them.
I tried connecting inverter before i received the BMS (yesterday). I got E3 and E5 errors when i tried to charge the Oukitel or EV with it, but no errors with smaller equipment. So i think the inverter couldnt handle the required power output and promised 2,5kw continu capacity. Bc the 8 lifepo4 (3,2V 230Ah)cells in serie have a 2C rate and should be able to deliver.
Try BougeRV Yuma 200W CIGS
I guess one metric that you didn't mention was weight with it being a portable product. I guess it would be watts per kilo gram.
Interesting 🤭
Heya nice testing
Thank you.
👍👍👍
😎
Cold should have increased the power..
Yes, exactly. We could see the output dropping a bit after the panels heated up.
So this might not be the best place to ask this but,
Multiplus-II with 5kWh jakiper and 5.2 kWh solar with ESS enabled.
ESS wont allow me to discharge my 30% to 20% that i wanna use for the night
so ESS can do whatever it likes at day (not charge from grid tho (Yes, enable charge battery from grid restrictions)
So ESS can use 70% to backfeed to the grid when price is high but when it gets to 30% i wanna use that last power (10/15%) for the night, so i dont pull power from the grid.
now i can only use this if i disable ESS after it gets to 30% otherwise i will pull from the grid because ESS says it cant go below 30%. then i need to enable it again in the morning to let ESS do its logic again.
Hope im clear, english isnt my first langauge. hope someone knows what i need to change.
Thanks already !
Sorry, I'm not an ESS person. Maybe someone else here..?
Moin 👍👍👌
Hallo!
Where can I get a 3d printed face plate for the new JK BMS communication board
All the links for that are in the video description here: th-cam.com/video/CyefsYxfTxA/w-d-xo.html
Andy, what did you do to your thumb?!
Working too hard!
I find the input detected by these Bluetti models to be pretty poor. My eb150 tells me my 175w panel can go as high as 190w lol impossible. and my 200w folding panel can sometimes read as 215w.
That is definitely possible with any panel. If you have cloud edges where the sun peaks out it multiplies the amount of light shining on the panel and increases power output beyond its specs.
👍
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Andi, you,as a solar tec influencer, do know the difference between full cells and halt cut ones, right?
Yes🥉
🐸🐸🐸
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The only thing that matters is the price. Putting a 100W on it instead of a 120W one doesn’t make it a good buy.
Ethically it beats the other ones, but who buys these cheap foldable panels for their ethics?
make more technical content and don't advertise pointless products
1. He's not "advertising" anything, he's reviewing a specific product.
2. This is the whole reason this channel exists. While he did slightly screw up on the summary for this product in not making it clear that it's very good as a portable solar panel that actually lives up to its stated output (very rare indeed!) but the "shade stopper" aspect is utterly nonexistant, anybody that watches the whole video will understand that.
All he does on this channel is review products and demonstrate how they are used and connected to each other, which is very useful information for anybody wanting to build a solar energy system for themselves. There are such huge numbers of competing products out there that it's good to know at least a few specific products that either don't work well at all or do work well with caveats. There are none that work well in every situation.
This product happens to be very much worth considering, just not specifically for partial shade, which happens to be the benefit that is touted. To summarize, it's much more efficient and powerful for its size than most, but it's on par with average in partial shade, not better as is claimed.
@@awo1fman too many meaningless words. Please refer to my original comment.
Oh yeah, my review?
Foldable solar panels are ok for keeping your phone charged, pretty much nothing else.
@jasontaverner2634 are you watch content you are not interested in and leave nasty comments all the time? If you don't like it, don't watch it!
So don't tell me what to do on my channel or go elsewhere. There is no space here for such sort of comments!
intéressant !