Solar Panel Warranty

[OffGridForGood]

Thats what I did too,
one panel got cracked glass during shipping, they sent me a new replacement, and let me keep the broken one.
I mounted it vertical on a wall, under a small overhang, as it seemed best not to have that cracked glass exposed to a lot of snow-load or rain. Its been there over a year now. Charges my mobile (24v) system. Works just fine.

 

[400bird]

I was able to locate a spot welder over on the secondlifestorage.com forum.

I cut back the white back sheet a bit more to get some insulation behind the strip.
In the process I found another joint that either wasn't welded or the weld failed.

It's about 3 times thicker than the nickel strip, and I couldn't get the 3s lipo battery to work.

So, grabbed a car battery, some extra heavy cables (3/0) I had laying around and I still had to really had to crank up the weld time, I ended up at 50ms.

It looks like it worked!
Tests good, but I blew up the 25 watt resistor I had used for my testing.
Big surprise ? the 325 watt panels heats up a 25 watt resistor pretty quickly.

I'm working on something to prove out that it works, but my Solar Edge inverter requires Solar Edge optimizers and I don't have any spares.

I've got a separate solar charge controller I could use, but this panel is rated at less than 48 volts and the panels in the charge controller are significantly higher ratings.

All prepped for welding


After the spot welds


Now I just need to decide what to water proof it with and how to prove it is worth water proofing.

 

[OffGridForGood]

I was able to locate a spot welder over on the secondlifestorage.com forum.

I cut back the white back sheet a bit more to get some insulation behind the strip.
In the process I found another joint that either wasn't welded or the weld failed.

It's about 3 times thicker than the nickel strip, and I couldn't get the 3s lipo battery to work.

So, grabbed a car battery, some extra heavy cables (3/0) I had laying around and I still had to really had to crank up the weld time, I ended up at 50ms.

It looks like it worked!
Tests good, but I blew up the 25 watt resistor I had used for my testing.
Big surprise ? the 325 watt panels heats up a 25 watt resistor pretty quickly.

I'm working on something to prove out that it works, but my Solar Edge inverter requires Solar Edge optimizers and I don't have any spares.

I've got a separate solar charge controller I could use, but this panel is rated at less than 48 volts and the panels in the charge controller are significantly higher ratings.

All prepped for welding
View attachment 176167

After the spot welds
View attachment 176166

Now I just need to decide what to water proof it with and how to prove it is worth water proofing.

Try it out on a (dry) sunny day?
Then epoxy seal it up ? I wonder what the original coating is made from, and if that material can be patched.

 

[400bird]

Pff, this is the California central valley, we don't really do rain the same as other areas. This panel has been wet like 2, maybe 3, times in the past 6 months and I did one of those with the hose on the front today.

I agree, epoxy is probably my best bet. The original was some sort of plastic-ish mult-layer thing. There is a layer of black under the white.

 

[400bird]

I'm thinking about how to do a better functional test on this panel. I've check VOC and ISC, both seem reasonable, but they did before too. It just couldn't hold up under an actual load.

I don't really want to, but this seems like the least expensive route to testing and connecting it to my 48v pack to put this repaired panel to use.

https://www.amazon.com/ECO-WORTHY-Controller-Regulator-Lead-Acid-Batteries/dp/B0B4SL5C2X

 

[Solar Guppy]

Just use a soldering iron and resolder the tabs, then dab on some sealant ( opps, see you fixed it with a welder )

Long ago I had some Photowatt panels that had dozens of these poor connections, took a couple of hours but got the panel(s) working again, In the Early 2000's many manufactures had this type of issue and my luck was I had purchased first Kyocera ( recalled and replaced ) and the Photowatts that had these issues