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Power Up: New Solar Panels

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After living on the boat, full time, for the past 9 years we have decided we “need” (aka “want”) more solar power.  Currently we have 1200 watts of solar panels coming from (8) Solara Ultra 150 panels.  This solar power gets us through perfectly well on sunny days. 

However, if we have a 3+ cloudy days we end up having to run our portable Honda EU32IU Generator.

Our goal is to have enough solar to get us through 6-7 cloudy days.  In addition, more solar will allow us to run our additional Engle (portable freezer), Starlink 24/7, and our new aircon.

Extra solar will allow us to have a lot more electrical and power freedom.

New Solar Panels

We ordered (4) Sun Power P7 – 455W bifacial panels from Hubands Energy.  These 4 new panels will provide us with an additional 1800 wats (total of 3,000 wats combined with our original panels). Technically, the new solar panels could potentially generate 2,184 as they are bifacial capturing the sun from the water’s reflection.

We paid about $150 USD per panel including GST and delivery.

The problem is that we have nowhere to put additional panels without building a solar arch. 

The only place for this arch is on the aft of the boat over the davits.

Be sure to read our next blog post on the building of our solar arch.

Install

We had to drill holes into the solar panel frames to fit them onto their custom designed brackets.  Always nerve racking when you put a drill close to your glass panels.

No issues with the drilling so we moved on to the wiring.

We run “mouse lines” through the arch to make it easier to run the thicker cables once the arch is up.

Next up we install each panel while it is on the ground and easier to access.

The new panels are embedded between the bars so there is no overhang.  We wanted it to look super clean from all sides.

We are very happy with the final look.

Contacts

  • Stainless Fabricator: Phil Waddell hardout98@icloud.com and his wife Joy Waddell joyw2@icloud.com
  • Hopewell: http://hopewellchina.en.alibaba.com/, Fanny Zhu: hehebiz@163.com
  • Cleigh Ltd Matthew Duckett, New Zealand, +64 21 890 697, matthew.duckett@cleagh.com 
  • Hubands, https://hubands.co.nz, Travis travis@hubands.co.nz 

Our blog posts run 6-8 weeks behind actual live events. 

We worked on these upgrades at Norsand Boatyard in Whangarei, New Zealand.

Be sure to check out our post on the new solar arch installation.