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[Music] [Music] you all right solar solar is definitely not a gimmick it is not a feel-good oh I'm just doing things for the environment it's kind of useless but it makes me feel good now Solar is real it's tangible it gives actually real benefits it might be environmentally conscious but that's not the only thing that's good about it it's an absolute real way to convert the sun's energy as a means to recharge your batteries it's here it's not a dream it's a we see it right and it's possible on a boat I'm trying to show some examples with solar panels which we do two kind of real popular ways there's also in parallel although I rarely recommend in parallel single solar panel solar panel in series and we've got a controller the controller is essential I get this question all the time Jeff they're like oh do I need a controller I'm just gonna cook my solar panels to my batteries well first of all solar panels rarely if ever give output voltage that your battery needs there's no such thing as a 12-volt full panel some solar panels are 18 volts some solar panels are 5 volts some solar panels are I've got we put a raise in that are almost 100 volts you're taking a hundred volts DC you need to convert regulate this power and you go through a controller to give what the batteries need because your batteries might be full like on my boat for example in the summer months I could be connected to shore power and I have six controllers that are each connected to a solar panel and those controllers have to say you know what I don't need to work the batteries are full so they'll disconnect the solar panels from the battery because the batteries aren't being discharged because I'm not using the boat people that connect apps or panel directly to a battery are the same boaters that are complaining that their batteries are being cooked and their batteries don't last you can't look you need a gate keeper the gate keeper is the controller okay we'll talk about will dial in a little bit into the implications of all this so when you're gonna be purchasing solar panels you're gonna have a big choice the first one that you're gonna make is am I gonna go with mono or Paulie and realistically what it comes down to is that a mono panel is more efficient than a poly panel what does that mean it means that if you have a solar panel that is let's call it four feet by two feet that panel let's say well let's make it easier yeah four feet it's generally it's about 48 inches by 26 inches so let's call it 4 feet by 2 feet that panel might be a hundred watts if it was Paulie but if it's mono it's 125 walk so generally you get about a 20% 25% increase in wattage for a known dimension so two panels exactly the same same size one panel is going to be about 25% more power output for the same size so what is why is that important well first is that the one that has less output guess what is actually the less expensive one so it's the best value so that's one reason the mono higher efficiency is more expensive okay well that makes sense otherwise we wouldn't be talking about 100 the other and when we tackle boats and I've got a boater that's got a large surface area huge surface area right maybe it's a power boater with a huge Bimini and they need let they need way less solar panels they may have space meaning that I could do an array for a thousand watts and they only need 500 because we've done the math and we'll talk about the math I'm gonna recommend most likely that we'll go with Paulie it's sort of like when you're in the country you built a rancher when you're downtown you build a high-rise right energy debt density is what is gonna maybe make the decision for you on your boat on my boat I have a sailboat that's from the 1990s that has a very narrow transom right my transom doesn't have a being that is crazy like modern sailboats therefore the canvas on top of my boat is limited so when I made a choice solar panels I had limited space therefore if I wanted more solar panels or I wanted as much solar panels as I could fit on my small limited canvas I went with mono panels right because the I just didn't have a lot of surface area to spread so mono and poly that's pretty much the big difference there's other differences but definitely best value is with a poly panel the goal is ultimately with solar is to be here longer by the way that's pre no desolation sound anybody who hasn't been there yet version of heaven right here 100 nautical miles maybe from here so that's frito right so basically why would we do about and let's say last year we did probably about 100 solar arrays so when people come to us and say Jeff how do I go about choosing a solar array I want solar for my boat but I don't know where to start what should I do the most common things that we end up doing is I've got a boat on a boy at salt spring on an island and I want to keep it topped off just to meet the man just to make sure because I can't plug in and I just want to keep my batteries topped off I want a charger to recharge my batteries but not a lot just to keep them on flow that's reason number one reason number two Jeff I remember the days when I didn't have refrigeration on my boat or when I voted without refrigeration and without refrigeration my demands are very minimal I just want a sore array that's gonna offset refrigeration if I can offset refrigeration I'm good that's probably the number one most popular thing close to that is an order that says or boater that says Jeff I want to be able to stay another day in Ankur I'm currently staying one day ice but I'd like to be able to stay too and I don't want to run my engine with an alternator at idle to recharge my batteries and I can't add more batteries on my boat because I don't have the space for it or I don't want to I don't want the weight or I don't want to spend the money on batteries right could be multiple reasons so they're gonna say okay perfect or they might be what some of my boaters are doing we did a large cameraman like myself I don't have a large camera but I said I was like okay you know of course I went sold it I'm like we're gonna offset all amp-hours our solar array four months of the year I don't need to plug in if I don't want to plug in I'm actually gonna be what is my daily a power consumption on my boat it's one about a hundred and eight hundred and ten oh my I'm gonna have an array that will meet my daily consumption and in the summer I never have to run my alternator never have to connect to shore power I could stand to hook four months of the year that's done so people that are going offshore for example that can Moran we did a fourteen hundred watt array why because they want to be off-grid never plug in again and 1,400 watts that's breeze is gonna give them and we'll talk about the math about 300 amp hours a day of power that's it they're they're self-sufficient they're off grid forever their batteries are gonna be cycling at night but in the day time they're going to completely catch up and they're able to stay two days that anchor without even worrying about Sun and if it happens and they can run their alternators but they won't need to right you got lots of mounting options we got flexible solar panels which we sew onto canvas and and we even glue on to hard tops you can actually peel and stick solar panels like I even mount solar panels on the deck you can walk on so we did that on a sailboat just recently and then basically on a rigid we do a lot of solar panels on arches all right I'm doing a 44 foot sailboat we're doing a bunch of solar panels the Catalina 50 that we're also doing that's also having an arch we're doing solar panels on that or you can install like tubing stainless steel tubing the challenge is with rigid is that it makes you know or let's rephrase the advantage with flexible solar panels is that they can follow the curvature of your boat and that is important to some of us right some people like I had a power boaters tell me he has a power boat he says I don't want a solar panel that looks like a solar panel I don't want to lie a straight line on my boat I'll do solar but only if it follows the curve of my boat and that would be a good advantage of doing flexible because you'll actually make it follow the canvas nobody knows it's there right that just the curvature the profile of your boat looks the same as soon as you put rigid ultimately you're gonna have straight lines some people are not burdened by aesthetics as much as others and for them that's a huge advantage because a rigid solar panel is generally at least half the price of a flexible right a flexible solar panels about the thickness of a dime right it's about the tenth of the weight but it's about at least double the at least double the price at least so you know it depends on budget it depends on aesthetics but there's a lot of choice so if you've decided that you're gonna do solar this is actually a really cool takeaway and what it tells you is that ultimately there's a long version of a formula but the short version of the formula which gives you the same result is if you're actually wanting you're wondering how much is a 100 watt solar panel I'm gonna give me an amp hours right like what's gonna be my daily output in amp hours you if you want to be realistic right not optimistic not conservative but kind of like on average what is 100 watt solar panel gonna give me it's gonna give you 25 amp hours in this latitude in the summer months obviously not in winter but in the summer months between May to August you're looking at about a factor of 4 another way to look at it is you could say Jeff I want a hundred amp hours of daily output from solar how big's for my array with V well you do 100 amp hours times 4 gives you 400 watts and then you can do that 400 watt panel in mono or poly obviously a poly 400 watt array is gonna be bigger than a 400 watt mono array okay but that's how the calculation happens we're actually lucky in the Pacific Northwest and if you read blogs this won't make sense to them because in the Caribbean the sunlight is even in the summer months only about 1213 hours in the Pacific Northwest in the winter we don't have 1213 hours it's much less than that but in the summer months we get 16 17 hours that longer sunlight makes for better output not at any given moment but overtime that's why in the summer months in the Pacific Northwest at this latitude we're actually able to get more output from our solar panels than people would in the Caribbean not many people boat in the winter here so it's not like a lot of naysayers will say Walsh solar panels are useless in the wintertime oh my oh yeah have you seen how empty the Anchorage's are last weekend probably one of the most gorgeous weekend's like this weekend I was in the Gulf Islands Wallace is got no boat on Monday no if this was a long weekend Pirates Cove is empty Montague is completely empty there's not a single boat no boat in Ganges that are coming in out nobody's boating so nobody boats in the winter except a few crazy people myself included so for the most part I would say Solar is great because most of us vote in the summer and that's when you need solar when you're boating not in the winter when you're connected to shore power so a large different selection of solar panels this is only like an earth shop we probably have 60 different sizes of solar panels so it's a way to every deer all come in different shapes well not shapes are all rectangular but different lengths and widths and that's how you can cover the surface area on a boat and originally the same thing there's a lot of choice so to recap you do the shorthand formula wattage divided got times 4 equals your daily at power make sure these are lots of selection and rigid and popular flexible gioco Solera which are really German they're really good to their walk on think about what's the difference between mono and poly right if you're going to go best value or more efficient those are probably the selection criterias you really get with solar by the way you get what you pay for with solar you really do so here's a little slide I decided to throw in there I was thinking about this because I get this question all the time and based on feedback from YouTube I had a boater that was commenting oh you know what this is so stupid why do you say MPPT all the time look at this guy he's saying pwm is better and I was like oh god I'm like yeah absolutely if you've got a solar array made of solar panels that are very inexpensive rigid pauly and you're doing a huge array loss of efficiency won't matter to you so much because I mean how big is your house or your roof I mean it's limit almost limitless on a boat the challenge is it's very hard to find a good location to mount a solar panel it's gonna be hard more of more reasons than not you won't be able to do everything you want to do with solar and if you spend money on flexible solar panels which are some of them are up to five six times the price of a rigid panel on the high-end quality ones my argument is that it doesn't make sense to buy a pwm controller pulse width modulation and lose 20% of that array when you can lose only about 3% with an MPPT controller so the takeaway here is that if you end up buying expensive panels per watt for whatever reason quality you know it's the only ones that could fit you want and walk on whatever if you end up buying expensive panels it doesn't make sense to buy a PWM controller and to lose 20% of that array when you can lose only maybe 3% of the array if you went with an MPPT the other big advantage with MPPT especially with power boats or boats that I don't we don't experience shading is well put the panels in series and then series the voltage can start adding like you might have one solar panel 20 volts another one panel 20 volts another panel 20 20 so now we have 80 volts coming in pwms will only allow to about 18 volts in on average most controllers the MPPT will allow up to and I'll show you some of them actually have up 200 volts coming in right DC and then they convert that hundred volts DC - whatever battery voltage you have your battery voltage could be 12 volts or it actually could be 24 volts so here's an example 75 in 15 amp maximum ampacity - the panel the maximum of amp isset e generally is going to be because most of the time we're actually downgrading the voltage is generally going to be the battery side but if you were having a boost controller the boost controller would actually have higher amperage on the input and then lower amperage on the out so what do you want to look for when you're getting controllers well first of all make sure you buy a controller that's for your battery voltage sounds silly but not all of us have 12 volts some of us have 20 for some boats even have 32 volts so make sure the output is match to your battery voltage people that do hybrid you know like engines with 40 48 volt batteries you want a 48 volt battery controller make sure that the controller can handle the amperage and the voltage from the array is really important and that you can also customize it to fit the battery profile because you can actually tail you can say I want a controller with a Firefly profile I want a controller that does AGM and so make sure that if you're gonna buy a controller and if you have not flooded batteries that you can actually choose the charge profile that really makes a difference so here's an example this is interesting we've got a lot of solar panels that are less than 10 volts you're thinking why would I buy a less than 10 volts or panel what is a watt right it doesn't matter if it's a hundred amps at 1 watt right or 10 amps at 10 watts like its power is volt Prime's amps so some solar panels the way they're done is they're 100 watts 115 Watts but the output is actually less than 12 volts so you need what's called a boost controller bringing the voltage up to what your batteries need ok I get owners that sometimes are stubborn don't believe me and they're like ah yes you're just making this stuff up and then they end up buying the solar panels they use their controllers and oddly enough completely out of the blue it doesn't work how am i okay well there you go full loop now let's put can we put the boost controllers in now oh so it really is yeah I'm like that's why it's I didn't invent the product there's a reason like you really need to think about what is your solar array gonna be so basically that's kind of a recap on a little bit solar panels here again just put it into context does anybody have any questions on solar for their boat okay yeah I didn't bring that that question that's a good question question is why would you choose the wire panels in parallel or in series or dedicated controller a few reasons first might be in a situation where you have no shading possibility right so not a sailboat because elbows have lots of shade power boat fly bridge no radar arch much higher or if the radar arch it's really back you know there maybe they have a radar tower and it's way back right so the Bimini is completely empty of any shading potential putting the panels in series makes good sense there because a we're gonna save on the wiring and the install because I could start actually having the series jumper and instead of coming back all the way down to near the battery where this is gonna be mounted those wires I only have to have a pair of wires coming down and two wires are actually going to be able to handle maybe two panels three panels four panels the voltage goes up as I put things in series think about a golf cart battery you buy a golf cart batteries six volts you put two in series the amp power stays the same but the voltage went up to 12 volts or for some motors have 30 to 24 volts so you put four golf carts in series it's still always a 220 amp hour battery but it's 220 amp hours now at 24 volts right so here the voltage would increase but the amperage stays the same so you you're not increasing the wire size doesn't need to be bigger and then you need a controller and here is a hundred volt controller that can take up to 30 amps so that would be a reason on boats that have a lot of shading you want each panel you don't want one panel to bring down other panels now good panels will also have what are called diodes bypass diodes so that if one is really shaded it's not gonna take down the whole array but still be that being said when we were doing sailboats or Bimini for example on a dodger on both side of a mass on a sailboat we've got a port and starboard solar panel on a Dodger we're gonna end up doing a controller per panel but then we'll have two wires on each side coming down and two wires why because two wires because it's a circuit right with electricity you need a one wire in one wire up otherwise it's not connectivity and you know what's really confusing and I was thinking about it the other day I was trying to explain to someone I'm like I think what's confusing is that at home we have a cord and we call that a cable right and when you plug into something you just plug in one what you say you say we call it colliculi a wire but it actually is a cable and one is a cable a cable is actually made of multiple wires right you plug that in there's actually three wires in that plug so that's why it's kind of misleading it's only one cable but that one cable has three wires in it with DC you need two and they're generally not duplex they're generally separate so that's why it's sometimes confusing so for shading areas we do control or dedicate controllers and for non shadings we do series but at one point you have to ask yourself and I do stop at one point when the panel voltage is too high nobody expects DC volts to be that dangerous all right you touch a 12-volt battery with your hands you're not gonna get electrocuted right there's not enough potential to go through your body but if you have a solar panel that's outputting a hundred or 120 volts DC and you're out there being the MacGyver and you're down below thinking everything's fine 120 volts of DC is gonna hurt so at one point I started making a trestle I'm like well you know what I no it works but nobody on a boat expects a hundred volts DC so I'm like we're gonna put two controllers one port one starboard and the reason you got to think about this too is that controllers are not one controller size to everything if you're gonna have a controller that's going to be able to have four panels it's not going to be four times the price of this little one but it might be three times so it's not like one controller does everything because you need a controller that can handle either the input voltage or the input apps right and as they get more the voltage gets higher that controller is more money so there's not a magical controller that does everything you're sizing the controller per array so there's no real cost in true cost incentive to go one controller for everything and the other reason too is for people that go offshore if you have one controller that is everything if you lose that one controller you lose everything it's called a single point of failure again engineer I'm like I don't like single point of failures right I like I like to have redundancy right I geek out so if I lose one I lose just one panel and that's why it's both they're going offshore that really need their solar array then I'm probably going to end up putting more controllers to limit single point of failures other questions yeah yeah that's it why do you need a controller closer to the battery some controllers actually are temperature compensating with some not all inside the unit they want the ambient temperature not all of them and some of them also have leads to go to therefore temperature compensating like on my boat my controllers aren't temperature compensated so my controllers actually went what I ended up doing is I went for solar panels are coming in the after the boat and then I have four controllers literally on the aft bulkhead aggregated to one pair of cable that goes to the batteries so I'm trying with these slides to go with what's the most common rule there's most times exceptions those rules yes so short of maybe keeping the system under fifty volts for safety is there a sweet spot for our solar panel voltage like you could have it all the way you could have a boost controller and have low voltage panels or step-down hot yeah yeah your question is valid I think it's really good I mean what's there is no sweet sweet spot I think other than electrocution from just because people think 12 volts is benign even 24 realistically other than a dead short but you're not going to be humanely if you touch a 24 volt battery with your hands on the positive negative post you're not going to be electrocuted there's not enough potential there other than that it doesn't matter if it's lower because we'll talk about that a little bit tomorrow power is V equals I so if you bring V down eyes directionally just simply higher so you could have a hundred watts one volt times 100 or you could have a hundred volts times one amp it's the same thing powers power right wire size yeah yeah any other questions yeah go ahead yeah connectors have to be so funny I deleted that I was like we got to go forth because Veck so mc4 connectors are essential with solar panels you absolutely need to use these waterproof connectors they're actually the ability to be done and redone there's it's black and white there was no reason not to you just need to special crimper to do the ends that's the only thing you can improvise of course MacGyver does everything under duress but to do it right you need a special crimper to do the ends they're not that expensive like when we did solar we started solar I did solar my boat six years ago and now we're full in like like we do solar like crazy like it's it's a big part of our business every one of my technicians has solar crimpers and we have solar crimpers at the office because people say I don't have them can you do cables for me because I'm gonna be interconnecting and I don't have them so we have the crimpers and it's called MC 4 it's the standard and it allows it's actually waterproof and you can do them outside you can actually undo and redo because some people are removing their solar panels and then reinstalling them on the canvas they'll take them off and they'll put them back on again so you can do that no not at all actually this panels good question has that's a fear right I'm spending money today but tomorrow it's gonna be so much better so I'm not gonna spend any money I put on my boats solar panels on my boat nearly six years ago they are selling that solar panel today and still to this day because obviously I'm inclined to do things right the first time are still the best solar panels you can buy and I still have incredible output like I measure my output of my solar panels because I geek out and I use it to justify to my partner why we did this huge investment in time and money right and I'm like Oh have you seen how amazing this output is isn't it incredible justifying the purchase right it's a really it's a great way for you know to help other purchases in the future and so I think it's really good idea to go with quality and honestly there is people always talk oh yeah look at what the University of Austin did I'm like do you know how long it takes to bring something to market in this like it's just Paul your motto that's it there's nothing the only big innovation is that there is ridiculous flexible solar panels that you can buy at Canadian Tire those are ridiculous I mean it's the panel's this big it gives you like 10 10 watts those are a joke our real solar panel is totally and there's China makes them there they're made everywhere the best ones in flexible no doubt are from Germany and Italy they make the best and then basically try not copies them and makes replication of them for about half the price or less depending on the quality of the manufacturer yeah the the question was what about the surface of the panel I like the smooth one because I don't walk on mine they're on top of the bimini and and a Dodger I never actually I've washed my solar panels with any detergent anything because it's so perfectly smooth and I've made sure that I don't wash them with a rag or anything or a rag I'm not scratching the surface that even bird droppings don't hold on to the panel there's bird droppings on my boat everywhere drives us crazy that canvas the deck the solar panels there's nothing to a deer - it's such a smooth epoxy surface then it dries and it just probably blows away like there's nothing to hold on to because the this panel is perfectly smooth so now the ones that you walk on you have to there's no choice otherwise you'd slip so the ones that are from Solera I have the German one yeah it's gonna be it's gonna be like it looks like an anti-skid right but they're also big money like I mean this is not this is this is a real deal like this is not a cheap panel like if you're buying something from Germany like cheap and German don't probably go together that much right so you need to have the budget and you know what you're buying like I have very few people that come to us and say I want a solar panel and then they end up getting a Solera they come to us and said they've done all their research and like I want Solera I'm like great decision I agree yeah here's why but I'm not gonna convert someone looking at a Chinese panel that's looking at 300 watt 300 dollars and he's gonna buy an $1,800 panel like it's never gonna happen like it's they're just not gonna convert okay I'm gonna let go solar panels for the purpose of time but feel free to ask me more questions on Soler's I'm pretty passionate about it because it actually is a real thing and it gives real results