Solar Bimini - what's the best panel?

[MarinerBlue]

Hello Everyone, I'm considering installing a solar Bimini on my 50 foot sailboat. This will lead to an eventual repower with electric. I'm trying to determine what the ideal solar panel will be for this application. My Bimini will cover a 5 meter by 5 meter area. I've looked at the Renology Eclipse panels and they seem pretty good in terms of density per square meter, but they seem pretty small and would require quite a bit of mounting time/hardware. I'm also hearing that bifacial panels may be a better idea as the panels will be raised and in a sunny yet cool environment. I would appreciate the advice of this forum! Thanks.

https://imgur.com/a/2zoTSWI

 

[Bluedog225]

Nice boat!

That’s a rough environment for a solar panel. Bi-facials may not be all that great for your application. But maybe if you are deploying while stationary.

I’d start with a large, cheapish panel or two. You will learn a lot and can buy something grand and marinized (if there is such a thing) later after you get some experience.

Also, I’d check in with the sailing/cruising forums. They do this a lot.

 

[Bubba1]

Are you going to make a hard top to secure the panels to? It's not easy to connect several panels to a soft top frame with the canvas there and be strong and pretty. I would consider a few ( one row of panels across the stern of the boat. Perhaps three 200w panels it they fit. See how that goes. When you're soft top sunbrella wears out you could replace it with a foam glass hard top. Do you have a generator? If you do the three panels might be enough. Dinghy davits might be an option. A place to hang the dinghy and mount the panels.

 

[svetz]

Possibly the 25 year flexibles would be light enough? (See Flexible Panels hit Prime Time?)

 

[sailingcal21]

Flex panels would work on a hard Bimini. For a canvas Bimini use rigid PVs mounted to a frame. The constant flexing of the canvas will cause flexible panels to fail prematurely.

I mounted flexible panels to my canvas Bimini and they didn’t make a season before they started to physically deteriorate and lose capacity.

 

[Smokin]

Sail south till the butter melts and ask the guy in a fishing boat where is Charlston SC City Dock, Ask them they know everything.
The panels you have are better than the ones you don't have.

 

[Opie91]

Mariner Blue,

Hard panels seem to be the best. I have had four 100 watt Renogy panels on my boat for the past seven years. They have worked great and put out 400w to this day. Upgrading to two 345 bifacials this year for more power and building a hard top for it.

An arch is one of the best ways to mount solar panels on a sailboat. They cost a pretty penny but by the look of your boat cost does not appear to be a big issue. By the way nice boat, I bet that thing has a ton of room below.

General consensus is that flexible panels don't hold up well on boats. No really good way to mount them unless you have a hardtop. Most of the people who do use them seem to be on multi hulls with gobs of mounting space.

Head over to Cruisers Forum for more specific marine advise on solar panels. There are a ton of people over there with a bunch of experience and a fair bit of them are over here occasional as well.

Good luck with your project!

 

[svetz]

...General consensus is that flexible panels don't hold up well on boats.

The general consensus used to be flexible panels were just crap regardless of application .... and there are still a lot of those for sale.
But the 25-year warranty ones (See Flexible Panels hit Prime Time?)) might be okay... they're new so hard to say.

 

[MarinerBlue]

Mariner Blue,

Hard panels seem to be the best. I have had four 100 watt Renogy panels on my boat for the past seven years. They have worked great and put out 400w to this day. Upgrading to two 345 bifacials this year for more power and building a hard top for it.

An arch is one of the best ways to mount solar panels on a sailboat. They cost a pretty penny but by the look of your boat cost does not appear to be a big issue. By the way nice boat, I bet that thing has a ton of room below.

General consensus is that flexible panels don't hold up well on boats. No really good way to mount them unless you have a hardtop. Most of the people who do use them seem to be on multi hulls with gobs of mounting space.

Head over to Cruisers Forum for more specific marine advise on solar panels. There are a ton of people over there with a bunch of experience and a fair bit of them are over here occasional as well.

Good luck with your project!

Thanks, I'm now leaning more towards bifacials myself, though I have concerns that the hardware needed to mount them has to be quite robust. I hear those panels are heavy due to having glass on both sides...

 

[willo]

I bought three hard panels - 530w each, 40x80". I'm putting in three, but have since decided to reconstruct my bimini so I'm a little delayed on it. My boat is in St Augustine, so I drove 3 hours to the georgia location of santan solar to pick them up.

One dude I met out there put panels on hinges underneath his bimini on his cruising boat - he found that reflection actually generated a bunch of power (like 80%) so he doesn't even bother hinging them out.

 

[willo]

Looking at your boat, I see you have a double backstay and quite a bit of boom shading. Model out the shading you'll get from those a bit to determine the ideal layout.
Also, put a dedicated MPPT controller per panel. This will deal with shading better and you get redundancy - if you lose one controller you are only out one panel's output for a bit.
I used 100/20-48 controllers (on my 24v bank), selected by putting my panel info into the victron mppt wizard.