Greetings professor hobo here with a hobo Technos brand-new entry to the flexible solar panel market. Now some of you love flexible solar panels, and so you hate them. Some of you say they’re great others say they’re junk.
We have one of the least expensive flex panels you can buy on Amazon here, but that doesn’t mean it’s junk it’s made with some of the highest quality cells that are actually made in America. Let’s check it out now before we continue, we’re, going to remove the plastic film that covers the solar panel.
This is my favorite part. You guys want some ASMR, let’s peel this one. The other way we got a couple of twist ties to undo, as you can see it’s, a standard solar panel with standard mc4 connectors. Now the only other thing in the Box is the user manual.
We’ll. Go over that very briefly. Tells you the about the limited warranty safety precaution specifications. How to do a series connection? Do parallel connections tells you like don’t overload the panel and stuff how to mount it.
What the operating temperatures are taking quits you can tell. This has been translated from Chinese mounting configurations talking about how to glue down the panel, how to handle it, how to clean it and talks about the 18-month warranty and then you can contact booj RV at gmail.
com or their website for more information. And then they include this gift card that says, if you contact Bouchard via Gmail and give them your order ID that they’ll, send you a free gift, which is a mc4 installation kit that’s kind of cool for a free Gift and for those of you that want to know the nerdy specifications there you go so let’s.
Talk about some of the features of this solar panel. Well, this is a hundred watt, mono crystalline flex panel. You can flex it up to 30 degrees. It’s made with SunPower brand made in the USA. Grade-A sells, so these are some of the best sells in the industry that go into this panel.
This company, booj RV, I believe, is based in the United Kingdom, but the cells in the panel are made here in the states, so use an extra-thick PE T coating on this, which is better than industry standard and PE T stands for polyethylene terephthalate.
It’s, a common material for Flex panels. They promised that this coating is stronger and delaminates less than other flex panels that use PE T technology now. Another amazing thing for Flex panel is to claim 22 to 25 percent efficiency.
Most of these are not that efficient, because that’s just the way the surfaces are. They also use stainless steel grommets on the corners and a water resistant junction box, so this is fine to be out in the weather, of course.
Now, in this little box, it also contains both blocking and bypass diodes. Now blocking diodes will prevent if this panels in the shade – and you have other panels that are not in the shade. It prevents this panel from heating up when current flows backwards through it, because what happens if this is shaded and you’re in series with another panel that’s in the Sun.
This could actually revert that the power can actually go through the panel and heat up the cells destroying them. So this does have a blocking diode and the bypass diode works is this panel shaded? The power will just pass right through these cables.
It’ll, just go right through the box and back out it won’t interact with the solar panel, lowering your voltage now. This is pretty common for all modern solar panels now, but there are a lot of flex panels out there and cheaper glass based panels that do not use both bypass and blocking diodes so specifications it’s 41.
3 by 21. Point 3 by point: 0. 9 inches and weight is 5.7 pounds and, as mentioned in the manual booj, RV offers an 18 month. Warranty with these panels includes any defects and workmanship delamination.
Anything like that. So 18 months, no problem now this panel is made with SunPower cells and SunPower cells. Are the only ones in the industry that have copper backing so behind the cells is a sheet of copper, and that does two things.
It provides less electrical resistance and it also provides really good corrosion resistance. Say you’re, going to use this on a boat or in a marine environment. These are guaranteed to not corrode from behind, like other solar panels.
Now. Another quirk of this solar panel, which is different from other solar panels, is that in between the cells are hardened connections. They’re heavy-duty connections between the cells, so that, as you flex the panel over time, those connections don’t break in Cheaper flex panels.
These connections between the cells can break, and then the cell will stop working. In fact, usually the whole row would stop working that’s. One of the reasons why these flex panels fell so often is because the connections between the cells will actually break and it kills the panel.
Now I’m going to show you a picture on the screen of what I’m. Talking about, but let me zoom in and you can actually see the entire bus. The entire width of the cell has a connection I don’t know if you guys can see this or not, but between here to there is silver.
You can see that silver stripe, that’s, a reinforced connection between these two cells and the last quirk of these panels is that they do not have lines going through them like other flex panels. What that does is that increases the surface area for the cells to actually absorb sunlight, that’s? How these are so highly efficient.
I challenge you go on Amazon right now and do a search for flex solar panel, almost all of them, except for Sun power and booj RV – are gonna, have extra silvery lines going through all the cell’s, so not having any of the Extra lines going through makes these more efficient.
So what do I like about this solar panel compared to other flex panels? It’s, certainly thicker and heavier like it actually feels significantly heavier and it’s a little bit thicker. If you look at it on edge, then most other panels of the same class.
Another thing that I like is the color scheme. Here you got white pretty much white on black, so it might look a little bit bluish because the sky is reflecting off the panel right now, but the cells themselves are black, so it actually looks pretty good.
I also like the longer than standard warranty. Most of the time you get a 90-day warranty, sometimes one-year warranty on these types of panels. They offer an 18-month warranty. I know what you guys want to see.
Next, you want to see this thing in action, so the professor here is gonna hook up some meters and we’re gonna show you some nerdy numbers for all. You guys out there who, like that thing, and we’re gonna compare this to other solar panels.
Today is a pretty clear day. I have direct sunlight here, so let’s get to it. So what we got going on here is this is the Boosh RV 100 watt solar panel, and we have the solar Sava 100 by jakhary. They’re, both pointed directly at the Sun.
I have cable running directly from this panel and it cable running directly from this panel coming up onto this table. Give you a little quick resume to show you what the panel’s, look like out there.
So there are the panels out. There pointed at the Sun – and we have here our jakhary explorer 500 and we’re gonna use this to show you the charging difference between these two solar panels. Okay, so how we have this set up.
This is my typical mc4 extension cord that I use for my solar panels background the plug panels. If you want more information about my ground, deploy kit go back a few videos. You’ll, see a popular video about my solar setup.
If this is the adaptor that you need, if you want to charge a jakhary product with a regular solar panel, so it’s, mc4 on one side and it’s, eight millimeter. On the other side, you know that’s. What that’s called eight millimeter plug fits right into the input of the jakhary, so we just plug this in you can’t plug this in wrong because it can only go one way.
We plug this into our extension cord and then we plug it into our Jack ray Explorer. Five hundred and we see what kind of charging we get. Okay, you guys can see that it says 54 watts. Now I have this charge down discharge down to 74 percent.
So that the jakhary Explorer 500 will take its maximum charge, so let’s, go ahead and plug in the solar Slava 100 by jakhary and see what the charging difference is now. This is 54 watts from the booj RV solar panel.
Okay, let’s, go ahead and plug in the solar, some 100 by jakhary 52 watts. So let’s, go ahead and plug in the Boush RV, again, 54 watts. So we actually end up with 2 watts more from the booj RV flex panel.
Then again it’s, not as portable as the jakhary. The jakhary does fold up and it’s actually lighter than the booj RV panel. But the comparison is close enough: it’s, only a 2 watt difference. So let’s, get something else that has an MPPT charger.
Now the jack explore 500 has a PWM or pulse width, modulation controller on it, which means it. Doesn’t really use the voltage properly to make as many watts as it can. An MPPT controller, on the other hand, uses all available voltage to make all the available watts.
So let’s, go get something that will use all available watts and we & # 39. Ll, see the real difference between these two panels. You can see in the background there. I have them both tilted exactly the same now and I also wiped them both off.
So there’s, no dirt or dust on either one. So I have this Max of blue Eddie portable power station aka, solar generator, which has an MPPT controller in it. I haven’t done a review on this. Yet I’m, still testing it stay tuned.
I am gonna. Have a review on this with a really big discount for you the way this works, if this machine works a lot better, if you chain solar panels together, so what I did is I took the jakhary solar saga 100 and the booj RV 100, and I put Them in series, so now we have a series connection of two solar panels and we’re gonna see what kind of wattage we get out of these two I’m, not sure you can read it or not, but it currently Says 110 watts and it will slowly climb as the MPPT controller kicks in and adjust the voltage.
It looks like we’re getting about 110. Now we are later in the evening hair or probably about 3 o’clock. Maybe 4 o’clock in the evening so and we also have some recent fires. So we’re, not getting a hundred percent from these panels.
Now, before you ask, I did try running the two panels in series to charge my jakhary Explorer 500, but the voltage is too high. It’s over 30 volts when you combine the two panels together in direct sunlight.
It’s too much for this okay. I know a few of you are gonna freak out and ask me all kinds of questions about this device. I’m, not gonna answer any of them really until I do a full review on it. I’m almost done.
I might have this review done in the next week or so. If you want to see details about this, you can go to. I’ll, put a link in the description below to this Mac. Soap, blue, Eddy. It’s, a 1500 watt hour.
It’s, huge it’s, got a thousand watt inverter on it. So a lot of you guys are chomping at the bits. Wait for my review on this. If you can & # 39, t wait go to the link below use the code. Blue Eddy 2019, get it for a.
I think. It’s 1100 and change to get this. If you really want it now, you don’t want to wait for that review. So let me show you what I did because in order to test these panels individually, I need to hook them up to an MPPT controller.
This doesn’t seem to be this. Doesn’t seem to like lower voltage, it dislikes to have panels series together, but I can test individual panels using my new renergie MPPT lithium controller that I have on board the fan.
So what I did was, I just ran this extension to the extension in my van plugged into the back through the rear door. If you guys want to see that the installation of that R energy controller is a few videos back, you can check that out.
I have the two panels now facing the Sun. Now it’s a bit about an hour, so I had to move the panel’s. We’re, getting close to 4:30 p.m. so we’re, not getting maximum power. However, I & # 39. Ll. Show you right now.
The booze RV 100 watt solar panel is putting out now. This is the app for the renergie controller. You can see it’s, putting out 69 watts that’s, not too bad for being 4:30 in the afternoon, with a little bit of haze in the sky from recent fires.
So let’s switch over from the booze RV solar panel to the jakhary solar, saw the line under panel and see what the difference is and for those of you that are completely lost as to what I just did is I took this extension Cord and I plugged it into this – this goes through the door, my van into the renergie solar controller that is plugged into my battle boards, so I disconnected my Shore power so that my battery charger, wouldn’t be charging the battery.
So I’m really. What’s happening? Is the only power coming in right now on that solar controllers from the one solar panel I [ __ ] up, so let’s, go ahead and switch over to the other solar panel. Now as not to confuse everybody here, I got this adapter.
It basically converts mc4 to anderson, because the solar saga 100 requires an anderson connector that’s. What this big heavy cables at anderson cable. So i’ll, just disconnect this here at the junction plug it in there and now i can plug this directly into my extension, which i have right now hooked up to the booj RV panel.
Let get this apart, see the extension here that’s, the MC for cable, which goes into the van. We have the adapter here. It goes to anderson. Then the anderson goes into the solar saga. 100. We got to do this quickly because this tree shadow up here is coming into the picture now, as you can see here, the solar saga 100 is only putting out a maximum of 51 watts.
Now again, look if you look at the voltage here. The voltage is only 15 volts. It should be closer to 18 to 20 if it was getting perfect Sun. So it’s telling here that there’s, nothing wrong with the solar panel, but that the bougie RV actually does a little bit better with evening Sun than the solar saw a 100.
Now I just plug the booze RV solar panel back in and it’s back up to 69 watts. So let’s, go ahead and plug in one of my really good renergie 100 watt rigid panels and see how that compares there’s. The renergie solar panel pointed at the Sun.
Let’s, see what the app says. 67 watts it actually said 69 when I first plugged it in and it dropped to 67. The controller is an MPPT charge mode. If you can see that down in the corner. So if it was in boost mode and make it a little bit more, but you can see the voltage is just about the same.
It’s around 15 and a half volts that just shows you how strong the Sun is right. Now it’s, not very strong, so yeah you would. You would get 85 90 watts in perfect Sun. So what’s? The lesson learned here.
The lesson learned is that this is actually a pretty good solar panel for being flexible yeah. It rivals the renergie rigid panel and actually outperforms a solar saw by 100 in a one-on-one test. No, this obviously can be used as a regular solar panel.
You can put it on top of your RV or van since it is flexible up to 30 degrees. You can mount it around curves using things like velcro or silicone, or some kind of adhesive. You can do it that way. I wouldn’t recommend mounting anything like this permanently.
So, as we run in series and in parallel, we showed that here in this last test, any of the adapters that you saw here that I use to do these tests can be found on hobo tech, TV, slash, Amazon, go down to the solar.
Second, you can see this solar panel there and you can see the adapters I use. You can also see the max of blue Eddie with the promo code and as well as the jakhary 500 promo code. So what’s? This baby cost now usually flex panels are about 2 bucks, a lot meaning they’re, usually over 200 bucks for a 100 watt panel like this, however, booj RV somehow use Sun power cells, which are the best in the industry and still price.
This thing at 150 9.99, however, you can get 10 bucks off if you use my promo code, hobo tech 6 for 6 percent off which equals about 10 bucks. You can get this for 150 and change out the door, and you saw outperforms 150 bucks for this.
It’s, actually a really good deal. Sunpower wants two hundred and thirty-eight dollars for the same solar panel, although they do offer a five year warranty with theirs. Boosh RV offers an 18 month warranty.
However, they’re made with exactly the same cells, so why wouldn’t this last longer at 150, bucks that makes this the cheapest SunPower cell solar panel on the market, at least on Amazon. So if you’re interested in picking one of these up, the link and the promo code is in the description.
So I hope you enjoyed the video of this flexible solar panel, and hopefully you learned something if you did be sure to give me a thumbs up. If you’re, not a subscriber already, you know what to do that’s it for now until next time, so they use an extra-thick PE T coating on this panel, unlike other panels and PE T, is stands for polyethylene terephthalate, so They use an extra thick PE T coating on this, and PE T stands for polyethylene tariff.
Here we go plugging it oops. I just pull it Bob Wales, I just plug the two two leads together from the booze rocker V panel. It’s. Okay, it won’t hurt it hey. Thank you for watching our video. If you liked it be sure to subscribe, share and like, and we’ll see you guys next time, both your arms don’t God, Joe Zara hat [, Music, ], [, Music, ]
