diy solar

diy solar

What's the biggest size single solar panel available?

You have a few issues to sort out first. Appreciate that having these on the roof of the vehicle and you're furtling down the highway @ 100Kmh and one get's "lifted", imagine the shmuck following you !
You'll want an Air Dam to deflect the air up & over the panels.
You need airspace with airflow between panel & surface.
That roof structure will have to be able to handle the stresses & pressures. As you are custom building it, I urge you to plan the framing so that it can support panel mounting and everything that goes with it. The typical "factory" made camper bodies, like RV Trailers are, well, shall I say somewhat "flimsy" structurally. 4-6cm thick panel as used on them (bonded foam and fiberglass) ...

You mentioned "Gluing" things to the body. 3M™ Automix® Panel Bonding Adhesive is used by GM, Ford and several other companies in production. You would be surprised at how many body panels are "glued on" now days. When properly done and once fully cured, the glue is actually stronger than the metal it's in, we've done tear tests (pulling panels apart) and the metal split before the glue gave up. BTW: I've been doing autobody & hot-rodding since my early teens, up to & including doing ISCA 100 Point Show cars & Restoration. I did this mostly as a "passion hobby" but also was licensed as a bodyman in shops.

Just a few thoughts, hope it helps.
”Trick” to adhesive mounted panels (or engine mounts) is enough large surface area.
IE properly prepped roof rails and glued with ”sikaflex 292” with 50*3000 joint area are not falling off easily: pair of rails would hold 600kN or 60 tons in shear…
You would need dozen of M8 bolts for same effect.

After all Car chassis glued from aluminium pieces is good enough for german autobahn at 200mph (been there, done that)
But I wouldn’t trust to VHB tape on that ?
 
”Trick” to adhesive mounted panels (or engine mounts) is enough large surface area.
IE properly prepped roof rails and glued with ”sikaflex 292” with 50*3000 joint area are not falling off easily: pair of rails would hold 600kN or 60 tons in shear…
You would need dozen of M8 bolts for same effect.

After all Car chassis glued from aluminium pieces is good enough for german autobahn at 200mph (been there, done that)
But I wouldn’t trust to VHB tape on that ?
I would be ok with a full length rail attached this way I suppose, but just angle brackets? No way.
 
”Trick” to adhesive mounted panels (or engine mounts) is enough large surface area.
IE properly prepped roof rails and glued with ”sikaflex 292” with 50*3000 joint area are not falling off easily: pair of rails would hold 600kN or 60 tons in shear…
You would need dozen of M8 bolts for same effect.

After all Car chassis glued from aluminium pieces is good enough for german autobahn at 200mph (been there, done that)
But I wouldn’t trust to VHB tape on that ?
That's exactly what I had in mind, one rail per side. Which I can use also to attach lights or any small accessories and maybe some kind of wind shield in front for highway noise of the panels. I've heard light bars also double as that.
I've seen small brackets glued to the roof, but only for small panels and that's definitely not enough for a big one. But rails on each side should be plenty
 
If you don't have sufficient roof real estate or you can't find the right size panels, consider adding a panel or two for ground deployment. I have 640 watts on the roof and 640 watts on the ground. I rarely deploy the panels to the ground as the roof panels are usually plenty.

Beating a dead horse: I'm not a fan of adhesive when it comes to PV panels.
beatdeadhorse.gif
 
I'm planning my truck camper build and I'm trying to maximize the wattage whilst having the least amount of weight on the roof.

More panels mean more structure around it, more kg/W, so a single 800-900W panel would be ideal.

The biggest I found is the Canadian Solar 670W:
From here: https://www.csisolar.com/downloads/

I'm aiming toward 800W-1000W total and the best solutions I found at the moment:
2x LG400Q1C-A6 for a total 800W and 37kg (quoted 360 euro each from a distributor in Italy)
2x CS6R-430H-AG for a total 860W and 46kg (not sure about the price yet)

From what I found LG offers the most efficient panels and it's obviously very expensive.

I'm also limited by size as most panels above 450W won't fit sideways and so I can't fit 2 of them. My camper won't be wider than 1.9m
LG is really expensive and not widely available in Europe. I’m not sure if the extra 40 Watts are worth of double price.
for example this is only 15 watts** less and half price: https://www.karkkainen.com/verkkoka...c-aurinkopaneeli-aurinkopaneeli-aurinko-sahko

**) at actual operating temperature the difference is probably bigger
 



Love these 435 watt sunpowers

Used them.on my last 2 vehicles

161.10 for USED 435 panels ..... thats kinda on the HIGH side ...
 
If you don't have sufficient roof real estate or you can't find the right size panels, consider adding a panel or two for ground deployment. I have 640 watts on the roof and 640 watts on the ground. I rarely deploy the panels to the ground as the roof panels are usually plenty.

Beating a dead horse: I'm not a fan of adhesive when it comes to PV panels.
beatdeadhorse.gif
I've thought about that as well, both having a tiltable panel on the back of the camper or simpler foldable ones inside that I can deploy when needed. I'll probably go with the second but that's going to be something for the future upgrades after I've tested the camper. Right now I want to concentrate on the basic camper design and that has to include all of the essentials.

LG is really expensive and not widely available in Europe. I’m not sure if the extra 40 Watts are worth of double price.
for example this is only 15 watts** less and half price: https://www.karkkainen.com/verkkoka...c-aurinkopaneeli-aurinkopaneeli-aurinko-sahko

**) at actual operating temperature the difference is probably bigger
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll consider other options. Not sure if this website sells in Italy too, it's only in Finnish as far as I can see. Other websites I found that sell in Europe have many LG models available but most of them have a minimum quantity of 10 panels. The distributor I found in Italy is through the LG website and I'm dealing via email, they seem to have many options even cheaper alternatives kind of like you advised me.

Although my thought is that for a piece of the system that's supposed to last 25 years or approximately 10-15 for use on a vehicle the price difference becomes small when you consider that, compared to other components. So I would prefer to invest the extra 300 euro on a very good set of panels and save somewhere else. For example, in my case, I don't think it's worth spending 1200 euros on a 2400W Victron inverter when I could go with a 300 euro 3000W Giandel that I will only use for 1-2 hours a day for induction cooking only (1600W max). That's just my thought, someone could think the opposite haha.

Also like I said before my goal is weight savings and LG panels are the lightest as far as I've seen, and on the inverter example, the Giandel is less than half the weight of a lower watt rated Victron. I always take weight into account in my choices.
 
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