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OK, everybody at once.
First off, no digicam here except the low-res one in the cell phone. If I took pictures, they'd look horrible. SD picture doesn't do them justice, and I've suggested to Brian that he REALLY needs some good professional pictures, close enough up to show detail and some human scale in them. You can, for instance, see the carry handle (on the main pole, between the tripod base and the panels) in SD's photo. What you can't see is that it looks like The Incredible Hulk gave a 1.5" aluminum pipe a death grip, and left his fingergrip embedded halfway through it. Nor can you see the welds, some of them beautifully lapped and as wide as your little finger. Or that the pole is in fact tapered aloft. I thought this was for windage, but Brian explained that they have to cut it open to do some of the welding inside, and then tapering it as they welded it back shut became a simple option, which also saves some weight. But--it just looks tapered, no sign of the welding involved.
You know how some baots just have beautiful woodworking & cabinetry? Or the way Sabre puts a teak dust bin grill at the base of the companionway, to catch all the junk you trek in? And you'd never notice it unless you happened to look at it, close enough to see it. Sorry, I'm not going to break out the old 35mm. and start doing that job.
SD-
Numbers. Well, here near forty north, with an oppressive sun, a weatherman's UV index of 9, and not perfect but pretty damn good clear skies, I was recording about 63 watts from 10AM - 1PM, loosely tracking the sun. That's right, 63 watts from a 100 watt panel set, according to my multimeter, about 4% more according to the SolarBoost numbers. Nothing near the 90 Watts guaranteed by BP, or the 100 Watts maximum rated. (the panels are labelled with both typical and maximum outputs.)
And again, I have to stress that I'm measuring PWM-DC with an instrument that is designed for pure DC, so I know the numbers I'm seeing are wrong. Not sure which way, but wrong. I didn't get a chance to do a full day of drain-and-refill real charge storage measurement.
IIRC from the various solar charts, up here we're supposed to get about four equivalent hours of full output from the course of a whole day, versus six down in Florida. That would be...about 250 Watt-hours up here, indicating 375Wh down there in sunnier climes. Or about 73 Amphours at 13.6V here, and closer to 100AH down there. If I get better numbers or a longer run to measure the effects of early/late day hours, I'll post them. Won't be this week. Even if someone is reading the BlueSky panel (which as I said reads higher than my meter, no idea which is really more correct with PWM-DC) they shouldn't be seeing more than 4% above that--but, if they are reading from the "fuel gauge", they may be seeing another 10-20% gain in stored amperage, because the PWM-DC is allowing the battery to take a higher charge, per Morningstar's paper. Kinda reminds me of the first time I got gasoline in Canada, and not knowing anything about Imperial Gallons, I was amazed at the great mpg I was getting.
"Probably only for the ones that do PWM DC. If the MPPT doesn't do PWM, a lot of the benefits are lost." ABSOLUTELY! But every mention of an MPPT controller that I've seen, indicates they are all using pulse width modulation or something similar, since they all essentially transform power, and you can't do that without monkeying with the DC and using PWM or pulsed DC or even AC at some point.
I wouldn't call the SS ugly, but "big" and "industrial" do apply--in the nicest way. It just ain't svelte, and it could be mistaken for a yawl mast on a smaller boat. Where those two big panels also make a nice replacement for a bimini top.
Also of note, if someone is onboard all day and moving the panels as intended, that's also going to have a big effect compared to flat panels that are simply randomly moving as the boat points into the wind. Angling and aiming the panels is something else that was well-reported in the university, etc. lab results all linked from the monster thread. For someone who is just parking the boat and leaving it--this won't be any advantage. For someone onboard and willing to just nudge the panels every hour when they walk past (or tack)...big difference. A difference you can't get with simple flat panels.
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