New Products to Watch

Going through this morning’s online solar newsletters, I saw some new products that are on the way. This is not at all unusual, but a couple of these things made an impression.

In solar modules, Trina is using bigger cells, but slicing them up and arranging them so you can get 500 watts from a panel the same size as a standard 72 cell unit! Wow, and to think I was drooling over 435 watt panels for my solar yacht! 500 watt panels would give me 4500 watts, which could come in handy to run the bigger motor that it seems I’ll need on my 6000 mile trip. No, I don’t think they are available, yet.

Another thing, a bit more mundane, is a new panel mounting system. Oh, somebody is always coming up with some new kind of clip and maybe I should do a post showing some of what’s in our media library sometime. This new thing is totally unique, though.

Are you familiar with seamless gutters? Bear with me, my mind has not wandered. The contractor arrives with a roll of metal and if you need a 40′ section of gutter along the garage, the roll of metal is run through some forming tools and out comes your 40′ section of gutter. This new solar panel mounting system works pretty much the same way. The trailer is pulled up to your house, the guy on the roof calls down the lengths of mounting channel he needs and the person operating the machine starts cranking out custom lengthe mounting rail. The result is a lopsided U shape channel with ledges at the top. You bolt this to the roof with the higher side down. Then you mount another at the appropriate spacing. Set your modules on the ledges and clamp them down. The channel area is your metal raceway for all the wires.

Neat idea. There’s always something new under the sun.

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