Cracked solar panel

[mregan]

Have a flexible 100w solar panel.  Stepped on it by accident, when putting it away in the fall, heard a crack and noticed a 1.5" crack in one of the square solar panel cells.  Will this have an impact on the whole panel or just that particular cell?  My thinking is that cell is kaput but the rest of the panel should operate normally so maybe now its an 85-90w panel?

The boat is on shore power all week.  The panels are really for 2-3 day trips to keep the batteries topped up so we don't have to run the engine.  With the kids sports schedules, we really only get out on multi-day trips 3-4 times a summer so a small decrease in performance shouldn't be an issue.

[Fred Koehlmann]

It will depend on how the cells are wired together. Most solar panels are set up so that the cells are in series, in which case your panel has basically died. If you have four rows of cells, they may be series/parallel, i.e. two rows in series and then the two sets of two in parallel. In that case, you'd have half a panel.

I'm not a solar expert, but we do have them on our house and boat.

[Ron Hill]

mre : Take that cracked panel, put in the sunlight and measure the output. Then you decide if it's really damaged!

A thought

[mregan]

Good idea.  I'll try it in the spring.