I believe it’s because these portable panels are subject to more use and abuse being stuffed in a backpack, folded and unfolded numerous times and are generally put in harm’s way much more often than a rooftop panel. True, rooftop panels must contend with weather, but they aren’t being physically manipulated over and over. My thoughts anyway.
The problem’s not the solar panel as such, it’s the tradeoff between PET encapsulation being lighter and less fragile but subject to UV damage, or toughened glass being UV proof but very heavy.
I already have various panels with PET encapsulation, and I haven’t seen any degradation yet, so that puts my mind at rest. It also occurs to me that UV damage tends to be concentrated near the surface of a material, so it may well be possible to use an abrasive polish to repair the PET by removing the surface layer if it does start to yellow under UV. An experiment to try, if I ever need to
All very true, but those effects tend to cause sudden failure, whereas the FAQ seemed to be implying gradual failure over time. The gradual failure aspect was the thing that piqued my curiosity.
Is there a review available around? I'm interested if it has autocoding for output, if it reaches 2 or 2+Amp on a single output, and if it has autorestart if sun recovers after a situation of overcast.
Years ago mjlorton tested all these functions and compared them for various model in a pretty controlled enviroment in a youtube video.
It is a brand new product. Review should be available a few weeks after sale starts.
According to their FAQ no.7.
When moving the BW-L3 from shade to sunlight, you need to reinitiate charging by disconnecting and reconnecting the device. If the device is not disconnected and reconnected, it can take up to 10 minutes for the BW-L3 to resume charging the device. The exception to this procedure is the iPhone; you do not need to reinitiate, it will quickly resume charging when moved back into the sunlight.
I hope that too….previously I was mainly interested in the 3panel version… Because of portability (I have to use it while moving /hiking and it has to stay tied to my Dragon egg mkII backpack). I already targeted the 3panel at about 25-28 usd few days ago. But when I saw this and thought about the overcast performances that could be better than its little brother I thought I could maybe think of a compromise with size, or maybe it could work with one panel folded… Don’t know… So in summary I really hope it will be a great deal Lol