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Solar Panels from San Tan

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Pringles

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Nov 25, 2023
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There are so many different solar panels from San Tan https://www.santansolar.com/product-category/solar-panels/
I'm particularly looking on used 250w, but they are still wide price range.
Does brand matter much? or should I just go for cheapest one?
Also it says Blemished, snail trail, cracked solar panels from same brand with different prices. Aren't they kind of meaning the same thing? why price is diffrent?
feels like I'm missing out something.
 
Pringles said:
I'm particularly looking on used 250w, but they are still wide price range.
Click to expand...
Just out of curiosity, what will you be using them for?

I'd put nicer panels on my roof given the expense, effort and appearance.
Powering a chicken coop i'd say any brand is fine.

Its possibly more important getting proper size and spec to work better with your SCC if you have one in mind.
 
They tend to list items they don't have in stock. Also they sell onsie-twosie and by the pallet. They are right off the 202, wander over and talk to them. They usually have a panel or ten in the show room, with the various defects, and you can see what it means.

You should go with whatever meets the need you are trying to achieve.
 
MisterSandals said:
Just out of curiosity, what will you be using them for?

I'd put nicer panels on my roof given the expense, effort and appearance.
Powering a chicken coop i'd say any brand is fine.

Its possibly more important getting proper size and spec to work better with your SCC if you have one in mind.
Click to expand...
haha yeah, it's not going on the roof, it's for chicken coop as side project. probably just gonna layout in frontyard and see if I can charge tesla with it.
 
I bought my new 455's from San Tan, drove over and picked them up in a truck. I also bought some used CS-250's (see sig) off Craigslist as-is. They have cracks and some have trails, and all but 1 seem to put out consistent power. They they have something better than about 1/3 the output of the 455's:

1701060056389.png
The light blue (A-PV3) is only 7x250 panels (one was flakey). They are about 10-12 years old, but you can guess which are the 8x455's and which are the 7/8x250's

I think the newer panels are generally just better. The CS-250's can peak output pretty high, but it seems like a bird flying over chops them down quickly, but to my point:

Output is currently about 1/2 of summertime. My cars both have 64KWH packs. I put about 3 hours @32A worth into a car today, some I bled out of the 60KWH of PV battery:
1701060685795.png

This only puts around 21KWH in the car, I see roughly a 5% loss AC->EV. Thus if you purchase 8x250 you might get around 5KWH of output in 3-4 hours, figure 4.5-4.7 might make it to your car. Double it in the summer.

1701061381077.png

I the last 7 days I have poured 108KWH into my two EV's. That is just under 30% of my total electricity use over the last 7 days (108 - 0) / (554 - 182)

You want to feed an EV you may want to re-think. You will likely want to run with at least 6KW inverter, and shoot for ultimately hitting a 20A charge rate (4800W). Going lower you start p*ssing in the wind, because your window of sun is too short to get a meaningful amount of power. Your going to need 16 quality panels ~450W and a 5KWH PV battery to maintain an even 20A. If you are trying to ramp up, I'd start with at least 8 450W panels, This should get you close to 240v@10A, which is enough to make the effort pay back something moderately useful.
 
I'm trying to decide between their used Sunpower panels and the cheaper cracked ones.
 
I wouldn't want the cracked cr*p, unless a fraction the price and I didn't care.
Do they have SunPower in stock again? Those are a premium brand.

Yes - I see some conventional panels:

www.santansolar.com

Used SunPower 230W Mono Solar Panel | SanTan Solar

These SunPower 230W solar panels can be used for multiple applications, on or off-grid. They come with our SanTan Solar 1 year warranty.
www.santansolar.com www.santansolar.com

I considered the P19 and decided against them - optimized for certain solar farm applications, I thought. I bought E20 series which seem to be good.

There is a difference in quality and reliability between brands. The trick is knowing which.

But find a data sheet and see if it says, "PID free". If not, I think they should only be used in a positive ground system.

At one point SunPower panels degraded badly in a negative ground, positive bias system. Solution was an inverter design that allowed positive ground.

And today, most systems are ungrounded, so half the panels are positive biased.

PID free panels should be OK in any configuration.
 
Hedges said:
I wouldn't want the cracked cr*p, unless a fraction the price and I didn't care.
Do they have SunPower in stock again? Those are a premium brand.

Yes - I see some conventional panels:

www.santansolar.com

Used SunPower 230W Mono Solar Panel | SanTan Solar

These SunPower 230W solar panels can be used for multiple applications, on or off-grid. They come with our SanTan Solar 1 year warranty.
www.santansolar.com www.santansolar.com

I considered the P19 and decided against them - optimized for certain solar farm applications, I thought. I bought E20 series which seem to be good.

There is a difference in quality and reliability between brands. The trick is knowing which.

But find a data sheet and see if it says, "PID free". If not, I think they should only be used in a positive ground system.

At one point SunPower panels degraded badly in a negative ground, positive bias system. Solution was an inverter design that allowed positive ground.

And today, most systems are ungrounded, so half the panels are positive biased.

PID free panels should be OK in any configuration.
Click to expand...

Where can I find some cheap PID panels?

Seems like those used Sunpower are PID free

And they come out to around $0.30/watt
 
Last edited:
They (San Tan) warranty their used panels. Great for me, I live 20min away, not as fun if you are shipping things. The 'cracks' are generally in the substrate that holds the cells. This should not be a problem unless the crack breaks the cell which normally doesn't seem to be the case. A couple of the used panels I have look like a jigsaw puzzle underneath, but they seem to put out OK. I did have one panel that seemed to randomly disrupt the string. I split everything in two, and re-arranged panels until I isolated it. Annoying because it didn't happen all the time, it would just randomly drop out the whole string to 1/2 output for 10 min, then come back. So if you get used panels, you may run into crap like this.
 
Check out Inxeption

diysolarforum.com

Santan solar deal

Santan solar is having a killer deal on panels, just purchased 32 for just under $1300 shipped to my door
diysolarforum.com diysolarforum.com

That one is sold out, but they have pallets of 400W and up panels for $0.25/W.
newer panels should all be at least PID resistant.
 
Pringles said:
There are so many different solar panels from San Tan https://www.santansolar.com/product-category/solar-panels/
I'm particularly looking on used 250w, but they are still wide price range.
Does brand matter much? or should I just go for cheapest one?
Also it says Blemished, snail trail, cracked solar panels from same brand with different prices. Aren't they kind of meaning the same thing? why price is diffrent?
feels like I'm missing out something.
Click to expand...
How many did you need I have two Qcell 265W I bought from Santan last year I would let go for $60 each. They are selling for $82 at Santan you could buy more of these they have 40 in stock.

https://www.santansolar.com/product/used-qcells-265w-solar-panel/
 
Siamac said:
Anyone can help me choose some panels? Not sure if I posted in the right place
Click to expand...
You should start a new thread where we can discuss your needs and not confuse this thread.
And with your own thread, its all yours to ask about whatever you want.
 
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