Eco-Worthy 195w BiFacial Panels…. Anyone have positive experience using them?

[troglegs]

I’ve bought my second EG4 Hybrid Mini-Split HVAC unit (I love them!) to deploy on a 200sqft shed building on my property and it being a 10’ x 20’ roof dimension - coupled with the EG4’s 12amp max input on the DC PV array, I was thinking of buying 8 of these bifacial panels and putting them all in series on top of my white-painted metal roof on the building. They’re also lighter weight and under 64” long (the max distance from my roof to the edge of the eaves on the building), so I calculated I can get 8 of them up there at a max roof load of ~175lbs. Since I’m in literally the sunniest place on the planet in SW Arizona - I was planning on putting in a dual feed on these panels - one powering the minisplit in the Summer, and another routing with appropriate shutoffs on each feed to divert the usage of the panels in the wintertime (when we’re at the location with our RV) to a general purpose mppt solar controller and inverter to generate off grid power for the rv lot.

Can anyone see some reason why these $139 panels would NOT be a good choice? Any gotchas that perhaps you’ve seen with them?

Thanks


Tom

 

[Mattb4]

I have 2 of them at the moment. I got them for about $100 each. They have been part of a 2000W array and seem to work OK. Nothing spectacular unlike some Commercial (Vikram Prexos) Bifacials I have though.

Part of the thing I find problematic about them is they likely are watt rated based on both front and back side production versus just front side as is more typical for Bifacial. My testing seems to show 70-85% of rated watt production. The commercial panels routinely run 90-120% of rated.

 

[Pompano Jig]

I have five of them in a ground array, they are okay. I've only had them for maybe 8 months so can't speak about longevity. In the summertime, probably getting like 80% of sticker. I don't have them setup properly to take full advantage of the bifacial feature (higher up and better reflectors on the back side).

Based on my experience, I would recommend them.

 

[ZottsAllure]

Got 6 on a tracker. Have seen over 1200w on several occasions. 1050w all the time. For the price they work fine.

 

[BerndL]

We've talked about them a lot in the deals section, since they're regularly on sale for 88/.

They're alright. They do assume ~5% bifacial gain in the rating, but to be fair you actually get that much just propping them up against a tree. Highest I've seen so far in Feb was 208W/, with irradiance in the 800s and no proper mounting.
Hard to tell in March because they're maxxing out my SCC most of the afternoon.

Biggest downside is the rather high 24.5Voc. really cramps your string lengths on the small sccs you'd pair them with.
Definitely something to do the math on _first_ before buying.

 

[Surferdudemi]

I've got six of them on a 2-axis tracker. Tried 6 Enphase IQ7 micros, and currently have 3 pairs on Enphase IQ7HS(?) micros. I tried the pairs because the max power voltage on these panels is below the MPP minimum for the IQ7s. In series pairs they are right in the middle for IQ8HS. However, I have not gotten more than 920W out of the whole array for either combination. Even accounting for the efficiency of the microinverters, these are underperfoming. Then I noticed some defects a couple of weeks ago. Looking through two of the panels, I can see cracked areas (with small gaps) in a couple of the cells and on the other some weird sections about 1x1" to 2x2" where the color is different. No reply so far from Eco-Worthy. Can't recommend.

 

[BerndL]

I've got six of them on a 2-axis tracker. Tried 6 Enphase IQ7 micros, and currently have 3 pairs on Enphase IQ7HS(?) micros. I tried the pairs because the max power voltage on these panels is below the MPP minimum for the IQ7s. In series pairs they are right in the middle for IQ8HS. However, I have not gotten more than 920W out of the whole array for either combination. Even accounting for the efficiency of the microinverters, these are underperfoming. Then I noticed some defects a couple of weeks ago. Looking through two of the panels, I can see cracked areas (with small gaps) in a couple of the cells and on the other some weird sections about 1x1" to 2x2" where the color is different. No reply so far from Eco-Worthy. Can't recommend.

Does any particular pair have less output? I've got 6 too, will test the combinations out.

It's weird, because two of these things regularly gave me 80% of rated in February, and a few times over 100% (albeit with snow on the ground). Zero QC to catch defective panels wouldn't surprise me though.

 

[BarracudaBob]

Got 6 on a tracker. Have seen over 1200w on several occasions. 1050w all the time. For the price they work fine.

I was looking at them also for a tracker, good to know.

 

[Surferdudemi]

Does any particular pair have less output? I've got 6 too, will test the combinations out.

It's weird, because two of these things regularly gave me 80% of rated in February, and a few times over 100% (albeit with snow on the ground). Zero QC to catch defective panels wouldn't surprise me though.

There was definitely a pattern when I had a separate microinverter on each panel. Two of them were consistently lower than the others, by 20%! For the first two weeks in Feb, the best two generated 3.22kWH and 3.13kWH. The two worst put out 2.54kWH. I chalked the wide difference up to being at the low end of the MPPT voltage range for the inverters. However, with 2 panels on each of three inverters, last week I got 7.46kWH at worst and 8.17kWH on the best. I have not taken the time to map which panels are on which inverters in this case yet, so cannot tie back to performance in February. It's a similar diparity though.

 

[BerndL]

We're just starting to do some tests in this thread, your results would be really valuable.
I still need to mount mine in a better testing rig for proper results