calinb
New Member
I purchased two Ecoflow Delta Pros and Expansion batteries to run a few emergency items and cover the possibility of extended grid-down and petrochemical fuel outages.
Online irradiance data and testing with 4 portable panels over this winter motivates a highly over-paneled system here in the dark and cloudy Clearwater River canyon of N. Central Idaho. (Summers are very solar-friendly though!)
I'm looking at purchasing a pallet of either msolar 400W or Sunpower 330W (E-series commercial) panels, to be configured as follows for each Ecoflow DP+EB:
Sunpower: 2s9 (series STC Voc=129.8 / Vmp=109.4)
msolar: 3s5p, (series STC Voc=111.2 / Vmp=93.03)
System cost is nearly identical. but I'd end up with one spare panel with a msolar pallet puchase. Datasheets and low irradience interpolation indicate that, due to higher output voltage, the Sunpower array performance exceeds the msolar array performance. The Deltapro max input is 150V and 15A so the Sunpower array makes good use of the Detlapro 150Vmax while still providing a solid cold weather Voc guardband.
I found a useful commercial E-Series panel extended datasheet for the Sunpower panels on archive.org. Along with a bunch of other stuff, it has been mysteriously been removed from the Sunpower website. The "extended" datasheet enabled me to interpolate some more realistic NOCT and even NMOT numbers, compared to STC specs.
The Sunpower array yields ~1550W from NOCT 800 W/m^2 and maintains the power down to below 300 W/m^2 irradience. Even at STC, msolar provides only 1395W. At NMOT 800 W/m^w, it produces 1317W and it falls off to ~1150W somwwhere below 300 W/m^2 irradiance.
So, NOCT vs. NMOT differences aside, near DP max solar power input all the way down to below 300 W/m^2 sounds like the winner to me! I also cound find no interpolations of the I/V/temperature/irradiance graphs that disagreed with this simple conclusion either.
I read the article on Fobes about Sunpower's maneuvering to stay out of bankruptcy, at least for now. For a self-install, I don't think I'll be able to use the warranty anyway. I can't find any other panels with viable DP array voltages that map up in the Sunpower array range either.
I'm new to solar. What do more experienced forum members think about buying the new manufacture, but older design, Sunpower "commercial" panels?
Thanks a bunch!
Cal
Online irradiance data and testing with 4 portable panels over this winter motivates a highly over-paneled system here in the dark and cloudy Clearwater River canyon of N. Central Idaho. (Summers are very solar-friendly though!)
I'm looking at purchasing a pallet of either msolar 400W or Sunpower 330W (E-series commercial) panels, to be configured as follows for each Ecoflow DP+EB:
Sunpower: 2s9 (series STC Voc=129.8 / Vmp=109.4)
msolar: 3s5p, (series STC Voc=111.2 / Vmp=93.03)
System cost is nearly identical. but I'd end up with one spare panel with a msolar pallet puchase. Datasheets and low irradience interpolation indicate that, due to higher output voltage, the Sunpower array performance exceeds the msolar array performance. The Deltapro max input is 150V and 15A so the Sunpower array makes good use of the Detlapro 150Vmax while still providing a solid cold weather Voc guardband.
I found a useful commercial E-Series panel extended datasheet for the Sunpower panels on archive.org. Along with a bunch of other stuff, it has been mysteriously been removed from the Sunpower website. The "extended" datasheet enabled me to interpolate some more realistic NOCT and even NMOT numbers, compared to STC specs.
The Sunpower array yields ~1550W from NOCT 800 W/m^2 and maintains the power down to below 300 W/m^2 irradience. Even at STC, msolar provides only 1395W. At NMOT 800 W/m^w, it produces 1317W and it falls off to ~1150W somwwhere below 300 W/m^2 irradiance.
So, NOCT vs. NMOT differences aside, near DP max solar power input all the way down to below 300 W/m^2 sounds like the winner to me! I also cound find no interpolations of the I/V/temperature/irradiance graphs that disagreed with this simple conclusion either.
I read the article on Fobes about Sunpower's maneuvering to stay out of bankruptcy, at least for now. For a self-install, I don't think I'll be able to use the warranty anyway. I can't find any other panels with viable DP array voltages that map up in the Sunpower array range either.
I'm new to solar. What do more experienced forum members think about buying the new manufacture, but older design, Sunpower "commercial" panels?
Thanks a bunch!
Cal
