I wanted to share a video from our very first customer to buy a SunPower 170W flexible solar panel from us. Rob was working on a pretty unique project for his recumbent e-trike. He added a trailer so that he could extend the time & distance he could spend on the road by charging the battery for his e-trike whilst underway (and store a bunch of camping gear too!)
The 170W was a great solution for this application, lightweight & flexible and as luck would have it the perfect dimensions for his trailer. The SunPower panels are also powerful - with the highest efficiency Gen III Maxeon solar cells (25%) it means he's making the most amount of power possible in the space available.
With a 48V battery bank to charge Rob had to go with a 'boost' MPPT controller to take the lower voltage from the panel (29.4V) to charge the higher voltage battery bank (48V). The solution was a model from Genasun GVB-8-WP-56.8v-Li, designed to charge a 48V nominal lithium-ion battery bank and the 'WP' stands for waterproof.
Check out the video on YouTube, it's by the guys at www.electricbikereview.com and they wanted to check out what Rob had put together and spread the word in the e-bike community.
Have a neat project you would like to add solar too? Send us an email or schedule a call and let us help you go solar with SunPower.