Hard to believe it's been a year now since we finished our 2625 watt solar setup. Everything
has been going really well. I was excited to do a one year update, and then I lost a panel.
So you might be thinking that one of these panels finally gave out on me. Maybe flexible panels
don't hold up the way they should. And while it is true I do have a panel that's not working anymore,
it's probably not for the reason you are thinking. Because unfortunately, I had one
completely ripped off the top of our RV. So the thing that really gets me, is that I know it
happened yesterday, but I don't know exactly how it happened. I was on the roof just a couple of
days ago and everything was in really great shape. We left eastern Idaho and we've been headed west,
and we're now in the Columbia River Gorge and it has been hot, like really hot,
like over 100 degrees every single day hot. And in those kind of temperatures, to stay comfortable,
we have to run the ACs non-stop, both of them. And if you've seen our previous solar update, you
know that with both ACs running and our regular power usage we use about 3400 watts at a time.
That's a lot more than our solar panels bring in. So we've been looking for electrical hookups while
we've been traveling to stay comfortable. And I was staying in an eastern Oregon state park.
Unfortunately I think I scraped the top of the RV on a large branch. There was one portion of the
road when we were headed out yesterday that there was some trees that overhung the road
just a little bit and as best I could tell it was just these little teeny tiny branches. We've been
through stuff that just rubs the side of the RV before. It's never been an issue. There was likely
a larger branch that I didn't see. So upon further inspection I found that there is a scrape that
goes all the way down the roof from front to back along the tape on the side of the solar panels.
So my thinking is that this larger branch that I probably didn't see scraped down the
top of the roof. It probably caught this front solar panel a little bit, and tore up the tape,
and then interstate speeds did the rest. Obviously this is a huge bummer. I'm gonna have to fix it,
but at least in the meantime just to get to where we're going I'm gonna have to tie down these loose
wires so they're not blowing around. I'm gonna have to replace the panel at another point. It
could honestly be worse though at least this is the smallest array of the three.
These three panels in the front all go to a single controller and maybe when I get down to fixing
it in the meantime before I get another panel, I could probably wire these two panels together and
at least use them. But in the meantime I've got two panels that don't work at all because they're
not connected now. I will have to fix this at some point. It is another unplanned expense. Man.
All right, now that we're settled and I had a little bit more time to think about it,
I wanted to mention a couple more things. It is worth noting that really hot temperatures
do tend to make this roof repair tape a little gummier or softer. I never had any issues with it
last year. I mounted these in the summertime, saw plenty of hot temperatures no problem. So
I don't think that hot temperatures alone would cause one of these panels to come off. I still
think it was definitely the tree that was the main culprit here. It is however worth mentioning that
you should probably pay a little bit extra care especially in the summer months when the bond
on the tape might not be quite as strong as when it's a lot cooler outside. I'm definitely kicking
myself for not having been up here in a few days prior to that panel actually coming off. And,
if you happen to be driving on I-84 in eastern Oregon and had to dodge a flexible solar panel
I'm really sorry. But if you do happen to find it and it still works, you're welcome to it.
How are the panels themselves holding up after a year?
Well, pretty well I would say. They're not cloudy or faded but they definitely don't
have that crystal clear brand new out of the box look anymore either.
Nevertheless, we did still manage to set some new peak power records this year. Back in May
when we were in Arizona on the cinder field near Flagstaff, we were still consistently pulling down
2300 watts from the roof. So I do take that to mean that they aren't really degraded much
in power output either. On that note, when I do get the new one to replace the one that I lost,
I will be doing a video showing a side-by-side comparison. So maybe that is an unintended
benefit to this entire scenario because I don't think I would have had the opportunity
to compare a new panel versus an old one. So definitely check back for that later.
So the panels themselves have been holding up really well minus that one on the front.
Up to this point there hasn't been a whole lot else to report since the six month update,
but I do want to mention that another huge benefit that we've been enjoying
is how the RV just continues to power itself if the power goes out at a campground.
In our three and a half years on the road so far, we have never gotten through a single year without
having some kind of power issues at an RV park. So for example, in eastern Idaho just a couple
of weeks ago it was a hundred degree day and the power went out for two hours. Our ACs just kept
running the entire time and I didn't even notice the power was out until I happened to walk by the
control panel and saw that it was drawing on our batteries. Speaking of really hot temperatures,
if I had to find fault with our system somewhere, I'd have to say that running the air conditioners
strictly off of solar doesn't work very well when it still stays hot in the evenings because as the
sun gets low you don't have enough power just to run it off of solar anymore. So oftentimes we find
ourselves having to shut off the AC and open the windows before it's completely cooled off outside.
That's not really a complaint but I do like to point out that a large solar setup is
not quite equivalent to a 50 amp hookup that you'd get at a campground, but 10 months out of
the year we have all the power we could possibly need for boondocking. So we've still been making
use out of our little Honda generator. It's a 2200 watt generator and we'll run it at half throttle,
drawing 900 watts off of it, and that gives me six hours of run time off of one gallon of gas.
And that allows us to run both ACs non-stop on those really hot days and into the evening a bit
as needed. A number of you have mentioned using a mini split instead of these regular inefficient
RV AC units and I haven't really looked into it too closely. I know that mini splits are way more
efficient. I'm not really sure where I would mount the indoor and outdoor components on our rig,
but a number of you have mentioned it so I wanted to bring it up as another option.
Our current setup works so we probably won't be doing that sort of project. If you have a mini
split in your RV, especially if it's a bigger one, I'd love to hear about your setup. Leave a
comment below. Let me know how it's been working out for you. I went over a bunch of use cases
and different scenarios about how much wattage we see in various conditions in our six month update
and all of that is still holding true. There is however one scenario I think I can give a little
more information on and that's how cloudy days affect us. It's really hard to say exactly how
many watts we get down from the roof at any given time depending on how heavy the cloud cover is
because it's just really inconsistent. How much sunlight comes through the clouds even when it's
really heavily clouded just continuously changes throughout the day. However, I can confidently say
that even with multiple heavy clouded days in a row, with 2600 watts of solar panels on the roof,
we're still able to meet all of our basic needs with just solar power. But, if it is
hot and cloudy, I will definitely be running the generator to supply those ACs. They just need
every single watt they can get. It's also worth mentioning that if we're in a very shady campsite
where the trees completely shade the roof, that also means we'll have some generator usage. But
it is worth noting that at this campsite at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon where we
stayed there for 11 days and the trees were tall but not really shading the RV the entire time,
we didn't actually need to run the generator at all that entire time. Now it did help that we were
at higher elevation so the temperatures were a bit cooler, but we met all of our basic power needs
just fine over the course of that 11 days there. And as far as the temperature goes on the panels,
I still haven't seen them get any hotter than about 165. On a normal day, they get up to about
145, and they're rated up to 185 degrees. So there still hasn't been any problems with hot spots.
That's it for our one year solar update. The system's been holding up really well until
now. I definitely did not expect to lose a panel at this point, but definitely check back for our
next update when I replace it and compare the new panel to the old one. Thanks for watching.