Solar Blanket Field Repair

[Tesota]

Not sure what happened but this cheapo Amazon 200W solar blanket decided to die yesterday. Water ingress and freezing at one point maybe? Heat? In any case it delaminated and my Manager 30 refuses to pull more than about 100mA from it.

This panel is obviously trash but I wanted to demo a quick field repair you can do if you're stuck out somewhere and need to keep your fridge going and battery topped up without burning fuel. All you need to do is cut open the fabric covering the internal wiring and bypass the damaged panel. I had some Wagos on hand so that's what I used to patch in a fresh bit of wire around the damaged panel:

Back in business:

 

[LandLocked93]

Nice.
Was gonna say, "you got what you paid for".
But well done. I hope to never have to do that.
Haven't bought into the foldyboi panels. For the very reason of your post.
But happy to see they are at least band-aidable.

 

[e9999]

well done! Wagos to the rescue yet again... [note to self: have some onboard all the time!]

It's a miracle that solar panels last as long as they do in AZ. Have you measured its temp at summer noon?

 

[Tesota]

Haven't bought into the foldyboi panels. For the very reason of your post.

I had some of those flexible plastic panels on my old hard shell RTT but wasn't really an option with my current soft shell RTT unfortunately. I've considered going back to a hard shell RTT just to have somewhere to mount panels again but don't really want the weight that comes along with the hard shell tents. Whenever my current tent is worn out I'll probably take another look at hard shell options, having the panels up full time is definitely the way to go if you're able to.

Have you measured its temp at summer noon?

Not quite noon or summer but just read 188F directly under the broken panel. Generally speaking I don't run these down here this part of the year because its too damn hot to be out camping lol. I'm pretty sure this one got some water and frost damage a few months ago which likely contributed to its demise. The heat is undoubtedly what finished it off however.