diy solar

diy solar

Panel shipping is hard, apparently!

But that is mostly the result of domestic shippin in the US, not from China. They tend to do a great job like EG4 had shown it.
Picked my 21 x 500W Risen modules up last friday in Wolfsburg, Germany, VW city and that pallet had arrived and been packed like the EG4 had shown.

But, and that is important, the chinese boss of the company had thought he needed 1 of those in his show room for presentation cause it was their first solar power deal incl. an inverter and 4 batteries which I had not bought.

And that 1 piece had made the whole pallet and packaging useless, we were even unable to move the pallette as a whole any closer to the trailer and had to carry and repack them one by one - but all were in perfect shape till arrival, when I had scratched one my self on the outer glas.

Anyway, it is not always china, usually domestic delivery and here such guys causing such damage would be fired instantly. It does not happen that way. Of cause we have a lot of immigrants working in the poor paid delivery service and not with the right sense for taking care, but they will learn it pretty soon the hard way how work performance has to look like in Germany otherwise they get fired which is usually damn hard for the employer except the worker has caused trouble or damages.
Here we have a zero tolerance: damaged goes back and we ask the delivery guy to pick it up, the mess he had tried to fool us with.
All those million of Syrians and Afghans refuggees and Asylum takers get it the german way or simply will be lost in drugs and whatever.

I usually tend to pick up my panels and batteries as soon as possible and avoid damages caused by courier services.
but each year I have at least one damage, 50% caused by chinese packaging and before arrival in germany, 50% by foreigners working in germany in the delivery industry. Usually it is a 500$ damage like an RV rear view camera system which the driver lost and crashed onto the ground in front of me, then an hp office laserjet, a laptop and so on.

I had thought that it would be much better in the US cause everyone has to fear to get fired for such a damage.
 
I took delivery of 50 panels yesterday. Before the driver even opened the truck, he says, "You might want to take pictures of this before I even move anything."

Best we can tell, one of the pallet crates had broken or something, and the shipping company just stacked the panels flat on another pallet. This is funny, since there is literally a sign on them that says "DO NOT STACK HORIZONTALLY".

Of the panels that were flat, 24 of the 25 were shattered in multiple places, and some were completely broken through the frames. Luckily, I took a ton of pictures, and the vendor has (thus far) been great about responding and working with me to resolve the issue. As far as I can tell so far, only 3 of the panels in the proper crate were damaged. One looks like a forklift hit the side and smashed the panel on the end. Another is in the middle of the crate, where the bottom failed and the panels dropped, and it fell on a corner, smashing the glass. The third has a weird crack that I can't determine the cause of.

So, best case, 27 of the 50 are smashed or broken in some way. I haven't been able to actually test the others yet, that's a project for this weekend hopefully.

I didn't want to just outright refuse delivery, since I had no idea how many panels were actually broken, and sending them on another trip just risked breaking more of them.

Mistakes happen and I'm not ready to install anyway, so as long as this gets sorted out in the end, I'll chalk it up to the imperfection of life and do my best to laugh it off. In any case, let this be a reminder that warning labels and notes exist for a reason :)
I am really shock seeing those pictures. How could they not doing better packaging and handling? Shipping is expensive these days!
 
Update: I got my replacement panels delivered a week and a half ago or so, and they are in MUCH better shape. The pallet is intact, and I see no obvious damage or issues. I hurt my back so I haven't been able to pull them apart to do a detailed inspection yet, but I don't see any reason to think there will be an issue when I do.

The replacements were sent to me with absolutely no hassle or argument, and at no cost to me. The process was painless and I'm very satisfied with the result. So, now I feel comfortable noting this was Santan Solar, credit where credit is due!
 
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