I shall be very interested to read Bill's review of the Amel 50, but you can have solar on a hard top on an SM.

 We had this carbon fibre top made for us in Greece this winter and are delighted with the result. It has made the whole cockpit feel even more spacious and achieved more headroom than we had with the canvas bimini which we had already modified to achieve better headroom.  With the hard top we now have 186 cm ( 6ft 1.2 inches ) pretty well throughout the cockpit. LED ceiling lights.   2x Solarworld Semi-Flexible PCB -ETFE panels, 180w each. In retrospect we could have fitted larger panels but the input even from these has transformed our use of the genset.

The vinyl window unzips across the top. You can open a small section if it's raining and you want to see better or you can open the whole window which rolls down. 

The hard top is strong--you can dance on it if you are so inclined. We are just happy to be underneath it.

Ian and Judy, Pen Azen, SM 302, Siros, Greece