Review of Heliene's 72 Cell Poly-crystalline 300 W Solar Panels

Review of Heliene's 72 Cell 300 W  Poly-crystalline Solar Panels

The Kortright Ontario solar panel demonstration project was set up to prove that Ontario Manufacturer's could produce excellent solar panels.  It was NOT intended to promote one manufacturer over another. Some wise marketing people saw this as an opportunity to show case their products by any means. Most or all equipment performed well with in normal operating tolerances.  However, an alert marketing manager could select his best panel, burn it in and then send it in for the project. That would give you a false high value.  It would have been much better to randomly select 3-4 panels off of the line and use those.

Heliene's panels did not come out on top.  Our review shows that their performance is of equal quality to all of the other manufacturers.  You can read my earlier comments on how someone might of twisted the Kortright demonstration to their advantage.


We got 5 of these panels to test (not one).  Every panel has a slightly different peak value but their daily harvesting value is close.  If we choose the best one of these 5 panels to talk about, then we would be squewing the results.  We didn't do that.  They were placed on our south facing roof to fill in some gaps.  As we are operating polycrystalline panels - 60 cell type, we are able to extrapolate directly as to their performance. The panels were installed by Flexible Solar of Windsor who also installed our microfit project. These are the best guys out there to deal with.

A bit of information first about these panels.

We were able to get Heliene to ship us these panels in late February for installation in March.  The bad winter delayed install until early April.  The panels have been running for over 2 weeks.  Heliene also  produce a 17.5% efficient panel in the second quarter of 2014 but it is mono-crystalline. That given them a 280 W 60 cell mono solar panel.

I chose these panels as I needed 72 cell panels to help utilize as much as possible my south facing roof. Initial results are proving extremely good.  My original  panels were suppose to flash 3-4% on the + side.

A result of 20% above our existing panels was expected.  These panels are showing excellent low light gathering abilities along with a measured output about 21% above an equivalent 250 W panel (flashed to 262 W).  Because of a 1-3% burn in loss that normally occurs within the first week of operation, all solar panels should flash +3% above nameplate.  Some manufactures are ignoring this and charging a surcharge for + flash ratings.  Heliene did not partake in this questionable practice which I am very pleased that they didn't.  I was informed recently, that the glass used in these panels is stippled to improve the panel's efficiency.  Every little bit helps, even a small 1% improvement from stippled glass will give you more money in your pocket over the life time of the panels, which I hope to be well over 30 years.

Conclusion:

Based on our SolarEdge panel monitoring system, everything that Heliene states in their product description is 100% true.  They also use a Kynar (PVDF) backing material which is very similar to Tedlar which has become a standard in the industry.  Kynar is reported to being used in Germany for the past 25 years with excellent results.  I can not comment of the life of the panels and if and when I do, it will be too late for all of us anyway.  The panels do have an excellent backing material and long life should not be an issue.  The panels are also built for the Canadian snow load.  To date, there is only about a 3 Watt (1%) difference at peak output between all of the 5 panels.  With SolarEdge, it is best to review the output at the end of the day as some optimizers are slow to report their values.  At peak power, they were about 21% better than my existing panels which is excellent.  The day did yield our highest kw hrs but the sun or sky was NOT at it's clearest possible value as we did not peak as high as other days.

 I give them my 5 STAR Rating.

NOTE:  Being retired, because of the small income from the Solar Panels, we were able to re-start our support of a child in need from Nicaragua.  If you are better off, please also consider helping those in need though the Christian Children Fund of Canada.  For the small cost of your daily Tim's Coffee you can make a big difference in a family's life.

Do you want to have an extra $60,000 to $100,000 to spend over the next 20 years? At the end of your 20 year contract grid tie and Never pay for your electricity again.  It is the project that keeps giving and giving.  See my design post.

If you have been wondering whether or not to go solar, I strongly recommend that you give

 Steve a call at: 

Steve -519 962 9218

He will give you an honest analysis of your house to see if it is worthwhile to install a microfit solar panel system.  For what we earn, we will payoff our mortgage on our retirement house. We still have to pay utilities and taxes but we are way ahead of where we were and we are lowering the carbon dioxide levels as best as we can.  A basic system will produce about $5,000 per year with straight string inverters.  Stay away from that and go with optimizers.  With a few tweaks, you could produce $6-7000 per year.  I still don't trust microinverters to last much more than 12 years with a horrible replacement cost as they are under the panels. Read all of my posts, starting from the beginning to get a better understanding of solar.

We do not work for Flexible Solar serving Windsor and Southern Ontario.  I do however promote any honest person in their business where I have had the pleasure of working with them.  That is really hard to find in the solar business.  These guys use the best components for a long system life.  You can even ask them for a copy of my engineering specification that you can use to outline the work specification.  I am 100% sure that Mike Holmes would say that is the way to do things to protect yourself.  They also use the best guys out there to install your system.

NOTE:  We booked a holiday in Florida in March.  The microfit Solar Panel system's March's production covered the rental at the Resort plus $300 towards food and gas. You might say that the Sun gave us a holiday in the Sun.  We sure enjoyed ourselves.