the e wind said:
Two guys on a team had issues with cracked solar cells, and had to abandon the trip 1/2 way through. A corner of one of their solar panels literally broke off. This is after that panel's protective film had started bubbling in the heat of the day, and had been for several days at that point. Several more participants ran into either full panel failure, or reduced power output, but they were able to replace the panels or resort to wall charging at night.
Thanks for your answer.
The IR luminescens Picture you see above was from a NEW highe quality solar modul bought directly from China.
It still was able to produce 50W of power, but the heavily cracked cells already get a bit hotter if viewed under a thermal camera. If you short the modul those celsl already get very hot, hotter than 100°C.
So if you are riding under a very sunny and very hot climate and you have even more demaged cells very high Temperatur spots way above 100°C are perfectly possible. Many people buy cheap moduls with PET cover and this will melt under such conditions.
As I said this is a new module. ALL semiflexible moduls have those micro cracks when bought new, if you bedn them only one time by 30° you will introduce 100ds of new micorcracks.
The modules may still work nice, but ist cells have been weakend and it will be more senisble to vibration, more cracks, hot spots and so on.
I do not understand why those moduls are advirtised that way.
The module shown in Picture one of this thread has been bent and it will vibrate. I bet it will look horrible broken under IR and while it might still work nice it will not live for long.
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I have another question about the Suntrip vehicles.
Rules are that the Motors of those vehicles may not provide power if running faster than 45km/h.
We have that speed pedelec class in Germany with its 45km/h limit but you need insurance for those vehicles and there are some strict rules and it is very difficult to get them approved. In Germany it is not legal to use a solar trailer with them for example.
Are those 45km/h e-bikes used in the Suntrip street legal? Is there a special insurance for them that is good for all countries travled (I see no insurance plates on them) or do you just ride them "outside the law"? Did you not encounter problems with police at least in European states?