Receipt of Solar Panels!

[WStayton]

Hi Guys!

  Well, I got 'em!

  The 21 each  SV-T-200 HV for $1.34 per watt or $268 per panel, that I ordered from Sun Electronics in Miami came yesterday.

  One LITTLE problem - some fork-lift-genius didn't fully engage the forks in the skid before attempting to lift and shoved one fork through the base layer of the pallet and made a mess out of the bottom panel in the stack.  I'm pretty sure the bottom panel is toast and I have notified Sun Electronics and asked them to make it good.  I ordered three spare panels, so the fact that one is gonzo is not a big deal.

  About quality - since these were sold as blems and someone else said that the blem panels he saw looked terrible.  I spent about four hours looking twelve of them over VERY carefully, and maybe I'm just too dumb to know what to look for, but I couldn't see a single flaw!  No cracked cells, no broken corners, no broken connnector wires,  no nothing wrong that I could see.  After four hours and twelve panels, I gave up looking for something wrong - I also ran out of time, and I will finish up the rest of them tomorrow! . . . Is there something else that I should be looking for/at here???

  They appear, at least to me, and my nieve/unskilled/untrained-eyes, to be factory perfect units and I could not see, for the life of me, what made them "blems".

  Needless to say, aside from the one damaged in shipping, I am very pleased with them so far!

  The one that was damaged had the fork-lift fork pushed into the top of it, which was on the bottom, since they were shipped upside down, and there is an area of about eight inches square in which the "glass" top layer looks sorta like a piece of plastic laminate windshield safety glass with the 8 x 8 area completely crazed by small cracks running every which way - the rest of the panels has some cracks, spread out considerably - maybe one every three or four inches in all directions from the area of impact.  I suspect that the highest and best use for this particular panel is as a large (3'+ x 5'+), heavy (45 lbs) PAPERWEIGHT!!! <grin>  I am pretty sure that Sun Electronics will either replace or refund but they haven't done anything since I notified them yesterday, except acknowledge the notification.

  Oh, and twenty-one of them made my poor little Dodge Dakota pickup groan a little, hauling them the 50 miles out to my new place!  The load was a close second behind the imfamous granite slabs for enough-already!!! <smile>

  Thought some of you might like to klnow, since there were serious questions raised about the quality of these panels, and, unless there is something that I am missing, the seem to pass with flying colors!
   
  That's my solar electric panel story, and I'm sticking to it! <grin>

Regardz,

Wayne Stayton

[Carlb]

after visual examination if everything looks ok, I would lay them flat on the ground and see how many volts the panels are putting out.  Look for inconsistencies between panels as there should not be much.  It should go without saying but do it on a cloud free day

[Ronmar]

Yep they may look physically fine, but were electrically out of spec when tested in the light box...

[LowGear]

Hi Wayne,

They're warranted - right?  But I would put some sort of load test on each one before I went to a bunch of trouble to install them.  We tested a neighbors with computer fans.

I bought super duper brand new ones and didn't bother.  No problem bra -  they work fine.  15 in a row; now that would have been a pain in the back finding the culprit(s).   $1.34 per watt huh.  I'm too self conscious to mention how much I paid for my American made units.  But they've dropped in price more than the electricity they've produced even at 42 cents a KWH.  The next set will probably do the same thing.

Now this puts you down to 526 project objectives doesn't it?

Casey

[cujet]

When I went to Sun, they had panels to look at in the sales office. The blem "C" quality panels there were pretty bad. 1/2 inch was missing from the corners of some of the cells. They were crooked, poorly assembled and looked rough.

It could be those particular panels were the absolute worst example, and what you get is better, leaving the customer satisfied. Dunno.

In any case, I am thrilled to hear the good report!!

[WStayton]

  I should have thought to tested them BEFORE I stowed them inside!  They only weigh about 50 pounds, but lugging fifty times twenty out into the "lawn" and then back in is not a lot of fun!  <grin>

  About the visual quality:  I have now looked all of them over, pretty darn close and there is not even ONE broken corner on ANY cell or any other kind of physical defect that I could see.

  I'm not sure the "blem" panels would mean that they could have performance deficiencies that are not related to the physical condition of the panels - Sun Electronics says that "blems" are "Panels that have minor, small defects in manufacturing or in the physical condition of the cells that qualify them as less than perfect.  Performance is warranted to meet or exceed the specifications of perfect panels."  Based upon that description, I would THINK that they would perform to specification, but I will test them, just to be sure.

  About testing them:  Is just simply measuring the open circuit voltage and current and the voltage and current with a small load on them enough to establish that they are okay, or do I need to rig up some substantial load so that I can test the max current?

  The short circuit volatage and current are, of course, easy to set up, but is short-circuiting them really good/bad for them?  I don't want to cheerfully go down the line and, one by one, deliver the kiss of death!  <grin>

  Anyhow, it has been raining so much here the last few days that, unless they respond to rain drops as well as photons, any measurement is out of the question!  <smile>  The interstate is STILL closed between here and Binghamton due to wash-out, and lots of secondary roads are similarly compromised - just goes to show you that 16 inches of rain sure messes things up!  We were in an incipient drought, but now I think we are good to go until about June of 2012!

  That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Regardz,

Wayne Stayton

[DanG]

nice halogen flood light and a digital volt meter  - put all panels (one by one) at same distance and angle and see if there is a dead panel...

[Mad_Labs]

All I do is check the dead short current. If your meter can handle the amps, just use a couple of jumper wires to connect the meter to the panel, then you can angle the panel for max output. Seems to work OK for me.

Jonathan

[WStayton]

Hi Guys!

  Well, I tested the short circuit current on all the panels today and the results were good - I think!

  According to the specs, the short-circuit current is supposed to be 8.25 amps.

  I had two flood lamps, running off of my trusty generator, aimed down at them in an attempt to 1) get some repeatability and not have the "sun" changing while I was lugging twenty panels out and back in and 2)  To avoid the lugging!  <grin>

   Anyhow, the panels only differed by about 0.03 amps from worst to best and the were between 8.28 and 8.31 amps , and all of which exceed the published spec.

  I sorta feel like I won the lottery: cheap, no noticeable physical defects and they meet/exceed specs!!!  I'm a happy camper! <grin>

  I measured the open sircuit voltage on some of them but, not all - I got lazy!  <smile>  They all exceeded the specification of  33.20 volts by 0.10 to 0.14 volts - Not sure that means anything, but the six for which I tested the Voc were all in excess of spec.  I was sort of thinking that this was really a validation that I was using bright enough lights to get the max current reading possible . . .

  Even the damaged one ALMOST met spec!  It was 8.1'ish amps short circuit current, but it was sort of faky and fished around a bit, not really holding steady like the other panels - so I am sure that it has some broken wires that will, in time, give up the ghost!

  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!  <grin>

Regardz,

Wayne Stayton

[WStayton]

Hi Guys!

  I got the replacement panel for the one that was "forked" (by a fork-lift, no pun intended!) and got around to testing it yesterday and the results surprised me!

  Instead of being between  8.28 and 8.31 like all the previous panels tested, this one was 8.42! 

  I though maybe I had positioned the lights differently or something, so I went back and test, again, six of the previously tested panels and they were exactly what I tested last time!

  The serial numbers of the original group were basically sequential with a few numbers missing - which also surprised me, since I figured that if these were panels that were picked out as having defects the serial numbers would be scattered all over the map - but the actual serial numbers spanned only 38 numbers for twenty panels - if my failure rate was 20 out of 38 I think I would get into another line of business!  <grin>

  Anyhow, the serial nuber of the replacement unit was different by about 150 numbers than the original batch - not a big gap in the larger scheme of things since I believe that Sun Solar had a couple of thousand of these panels originally.

  Obviously I will keep this panel out of the 18 that I am going to mount on the roof and not introduce ANOTHER variable into the mix!   I don't think that the chickens/goats will mind that there panel is different!  <smile>

  That's it - 21 panels ordered, 21 panels delivered with VERY acceptable quality on the panels!

  Oh, and Sun Solar said that the damaged panel was mine to do with as I please - they didn't think that it was worth the freight for them to ship it back - Any suggestions for a use for a VERY cracked panel, other than an clumsy, LARGE paper weight?  <grin>

Regardz,

Wayne Stayton

[DanG]

'Blemished' panels... when an architect specifies x, y, z for a project there is language in the bidding process for materials to match aesthetics like color across the entire installation. The contractor who gets the work then is on the hook for a perfect visual appearance and specs out perfect color conformity to his suppliers who transfers that burden on down the line. When the silicon foundry sputtered out the active junction layers on the PV wafers slight variances in vacuum, temperature or machine age etc. can or will force a slightly different 'look' so they've got a color matching sort after they've electrically tested the wafers. The deep blue color isn't really necessary, I've got loose cells that are 14k gold in color, chrome silver and even yellow-greenish but it keeps 'showcase' installations in technology parks on the Interstate from the heartbreak of embarrassing ACME (Wilie E Coyote Solar Company) "visual variations".

As for using the damaged panel... no clue. maybe a three-week warm Methylene Chloride bath to dissolve the encapsulant and retrieve the loose solar cells?