This company (Tiny Watts Solar) specializes in high end builds mostly for the vanlife/sprinter community it seems. I get the impression their primary business is semi-custom electrical system design-builds.
But the feature that makes them stand out, and the feature that caught my eye, is the 'solar roof deck' and 'solar roof box' products they offer. I can't find a ton of information on it, but from what I have been able to gather the solar roof deck is a 500W nominal panel, flush mounted to some sort of composite backing, with a profile of just an inch or two, and is designed to be walked on, sat on, and to handle up to 750lbs I think, it is also apparently flexible and bendable. The solar roof box is the same concept but build into the lid of a large rooftop storage box. A lot of the info out there is for their gen1 product, I think they are currently updating their website with info about the gen 2 product, but its not up yet. There instagram has some pictures of it.
As cool as I think the concept is, I'm a wary of it too. I wonder how durable the panel is over time, will the panel output be degraded over 5+ years of being used as a deck? How efficient are these panels, it seems likely heat would be an issue since they are attached directly to a composite backing much in the same way stick on flexible solar panels suffer?
You can see the panel and the build process (of the first gen roof deck) in this video beginning at 3:30 and a tour of their own very cool van here.
But the feature that makes them stand out, and the feature that caught my eye, is the 'solar roof deck' and 'solar roof box' products they offer. I can't find a ton of information on it, but from what I have been able to gather the solar roof deck is a 500W nominal panel, flush mounted to some sort of composite backing, with a profile of just an inch or two, and is designed to be walked on, sat on, and to handle up to 750lbs I think, it is also apparently flexible and bendable. The solar roof box is the same concept but build into the lid of a large rooftop storage box. A lot of the info out there is for their gen1 product, I think they are currently updating their website with info about the gen 2 product, but its not up yet. There instagram has some pictures of it.
As cool as I think the concept is, I'm a wary of it too. I wonder how durable the panel is over time, will the panel output be degraded over 5+ years of being used as a deck? How efficient are these panels, it seems likely heat would be an issue since they are attached directly to a composite backing much in the same way stick on flexible solar panels suffer?
You can see the panel and the build process (of the first gen roof deck) in this video beginning at 3:30 and a tour of their own very cool van here.
