Hello fellow Amel owners,

In 2017 I purchased Amelia in Grenada and built a solar and wind arch. It has been great. I installed what was available at the time; namely two 265w mono panels measuring 1655mm x 992mm.

I am pretty close to self sufficient if there is some wind, but as we all know you can not have too much power,  especially as I have a 2.4kw inverter that can soak up a lot of power. 

I am back in the UK for a few weeks and see, Canadian Solar have a mono 410w panel  measuring 1700mm x 992mm. The same width but only 45mm longer. This would pump out over 50% extra….in those two years the technology has improved a lot!!! The amazing thing is that the prices have fallen too. I paid US$ 363 for each panel. Still waiting on prices but will be less for sure. It would not be a huge expense to upgrade the panels as the whole infrastructure is already in place. 50% extra solar output is huge.

Does anyone have any opinion as to the very best panel to buy? Is there any specific technology I should look for? 

This is just brainstorming at the moment...

Happy sailing 

Nick

S/Y Amelia AML 54-019

Kefalonia, Greece.

My experience might be an outlier, but I had the best luck with the lowest price, Chinese panels, Trina, and a bad experience with the best, SunPower. After 4 years, the SunPower output 55%. They would not honor their warranty. The Trina’s after 5 years, are doing great.

~~~⛵️~~~Matt

On Sep 5, 2019, at 6:48 AM, ngtnewington Newington via Groups.Io <ngtnewington@...> wrote:

Hello fellow Amel owners,

In 2017 I purchased Amelia in Grenada and built a solar and wind arch. It has been great. I installed what was available at the time; namely two 265w mono panels measuring 1655mm x 992mm.

I am pretty close to self sufficient if there is some wind, but as we all know you can not have too much power,  especially as I have a 2.4kw inverter that can soak up a lot of power. 

I am back in the UK for a few weeks and see, Canadian Solar have a mono 410w panel  measuring 1700mm x 992mm. The same width but only 45mm longer. This would pump out over 50% extra….in those two years the technology has improved a lot!!! The amazing thing is that the prices have fallen too. I paid US$ 363 for each panel. Still waiting on prices but will be less for sure. It would not be a huge expense to upgrade the panels as the whole infrastructure is already in place. 50% extra solar output is huge.

Does anyone have any opinion as to the very best panel to buy? Is there any specific technology I should look for? 

This is just brainstorming at the moment...

Happy sailing 

Nick

S/Y Amelia AML 54-019

Kefalonia, Greece.