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  • Hi

  • today I want to show you flexible solar panel. Now when you think of solar panels

  • you might be thinking of something like this which is a regular solar panel with

  • the aluminium frame

  • it's a little bit heavy and it takes some serious mounting hardware

  • but that's not what I'm talking about. What i'm talking about is one of these

  • new flexible solar panels

  • now this one you can see just rolls out like this and you literally just unroll it

  • Now the good thing about this, aside from the fact that it's a lot lighter which makes it easier to transport

  • to mount. It's also flexible so if you have for instance a rounded roof or something like that

  • you can easily make this work with the roof. Now how you mount this depends on

  • whether you want it to be a permanent install or semi-permanent if you think you might move it

  • sometime in the future

  • a lot of people are just using a silicon

  • bead along here sticking straight to the roof or wherever they're putting it

  • now aside from the fact that this one is flexible

  • and this one is a rigid, what's the difference between these two panels?

  • well to start with this one is low voltage, this puts out maybe up to 20

  • volts

  • whereas this flexible panel here actually put out 320 volts

  • that's higher than the Voltage inside your house. Now the reason for this high

  • voltage is that it's meant primarily

  • grid tie. So rather than storing the power in a battery

  • you're going to put it straight into the existing grid inside your house

  • but obviously drop the voltage down using a grid-tie inverter

  • but that's why the voltage is so high

  • the good thing about high voltage of course is that you don't need such thick

  • wires. So if you're going to do a long run between the roof and inside

  • you don't need to buy some really chunky cables

  • So thats the advantage of high voltage. Of course it does make it a little more dangerous to

  • work with

  • But you're going to put proper mc4 connectors on this pannel anyway, so

  • there's not really much danger as long as you

  • use a little bit of common sense and you don't try and touch both

  • points at the same time, or something crazy like that.

  • Now you might notice that there's actually no connectors on

  • here, so you might be thinking how do you connect this? Because on this panel

  • you have a junction box on the back and then you have your positive and negative

  • cable coming off, so nice and simple.

  • If you're wondering this is a 50 watt panel from CDRKING

  • I'm still very happy with CDRKing solar panels so I do still recommend them.

  • Their prices seems to be increasing a bit, I think they've realized that there

  • is a high demand for this solar panels

  • and you know they're changing models and then increasing the prices

  • but essentially

  • seems to be pretty much the same panels as before, so

  • you know, I think they're really starting to cash in on

  • the fact that their solar panels were a lot cheaper than everyone elses.

  • So, how do you put the connectors on here? Well each end

  • is a wire, you'll see that there's a bit of tape here and If

  • I peel back the tape, you'll see the wires exposed.

  • So one end is negative, one end is positive. And what you have to do is solder your connectors onto here

  • and then you can either put junction box like you see on the back of there

  • onto here, or you can just use some kind of silicon or something like that

  • make a good seal with your connection.

  • I'll pause the video and go and grab one I've already made.

  • QC policemen are over there

  • QCs finest

  • so here's one that I prepared earlier. If you look underneath you'll see where

  • the wire comes in and I joined on my cable

  • This is regular 4mm solar cable which is suitable for outdoor use

  • and then I put an MC4 connector on the end. These are really great connectors, they're

  • a little bit pricey.

  • They're not too bad but compared to just home made connections, these are a

  • little bit more pricey.

  • Maybe 150 peso per pair

  • The good thing about these is that you crimp your connector on the inside

  • and then you put this enclosure over it and it makes a really good water

  • tight seal. Basically you have a male and a female

  • when you join together you've got a really good outside suitable connection.

  • Now what you'll see is that I've put some black silicon here.

  • It's the same silicon you'd use on your windscreen, if you

  • you replace the windscreen for example, that's the silicon you're going to put there.

  • So on each end, I've put one of these connectors.

  • what you'll do is basically daisy chain these where each panel

  • will connect to the next and the next one and you're probably going to want to do it in

  • parallel

  • since these panels are such high voltage, if you were to put it in series you would

  • end up with maybe a 1000 or higher

  • volts. And that's not very workable unless you've got a really high end inverter.

  • So lets go ahead and test one of these shall we?

  • So Quezon City Policemen are over there. Manilas Finest.

  • I always see them

  • here by the monument, especially at night time when you get some drag racers

  • coming around this area. So see I just made that connection there, this would

  • usually go to the next solar panel

  • But in this case I'm just going to connect directly to this to measure the voltage

  • and of course the amps

  • Now it's not an especially sunny day. But that doesn't matter because I already know

  • that these panels do output what they're meant to. So this is really just to show you

  • the panel in action.

  • I'm not even going to expand the panel to its full length because I want to

  • keep it within the camera shot.

  • So I'll just open it up a little bit.

  • Let's get our multimeter and let's start by measuring the voltage.

  • Now it might be a little bit lower since I've folded over half of the panel. But

  • let's just check anyway.

  • So I'm measuring, I don't know if you'll be able to see this from there. But I'm measuring

  • 317 volts, that's pretty high, it's not something that you'd really want to touch

  • with your bare hands.

  • Now lets measure the amps. Of course this is going to be much lower than what it

  • should be, because

  • you know it's cloudy day and half of the panel is still folded up

  • like this.

  • I'm measuring

  • 0.1 amps. So if you do 0.1

  • multiplied by 320. I'm not sure what the answer is, I'll add that in afterwards.

  • You might be wondering, what's the point of a flexible solar panel? Why not just stick with the

  • regular solid panels?

  • These are especially suitable when you want to mount them somewhere

  • that's unusual, for instance if you had a bus shelter roof which is like this,

  • Then you could actually curve this whole panel to fit

  • perfectly on there. It's also really easy to mount.

  • Because you could just put a couple of beads of

  • silicon around the edges and then stick it straight onto a metal roof.

  • It's super easy to mount, you could mount these in

  • half a day, 4 or 5 panels in just a few hours.

  • So that's one of the benefits of these panels.

  • They're also very light weight if you need to transport them somewhere. That makes them very useful if you're a hardcore philippine traveler

  • or you're using them for a charity or disaster events.

  • You can just put these in the car, you don't need to load up a van with heavy solar panels

  • and worry about the glass breaking. you can just throw these in the back of a car

  • take them to the site. Hook it all up and you're ready to roll.

  • You don't even need to mount these permanently. You could just lay them on the ground

  • put some rocks on the and or something like that and boom you've got instant power ready.

  • I hope you enjoyed the video. If you have any questions please

  • leave them in the comments section below. I apologize if the sound quality on this

  • video isn't very good I'm using this: clip-on mic but I broke the clip so it's

  • it's falling off all the time

  • I'm hoping that once I go to edit this, it's all okay.

  • But I'm a little bit worried. So if you have any questions or perhaps you have an

  • idea about what you'd use this

  • flexible solar panel for, leave it in the comments section

  • and please do remember to give a thumbs up and subscribe. Thanks for watching!

Hi

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