Flinsail: a cool new way to do solar

[Na Mara]

The whole thing launches from a bag measuring approx 1,2*0,6*0,05m. It wieghs very little. You put the bag on the boom at the gooseneck and clip it there to launch.

Launching takes 5 mins and it’s much like a sail. Clip on the tack, clip on the clew, attach the topping lift or halyard to the head. Feed 6 sliders into the mast groove. Hoist. Connect cables. Done. Removal is in reverse and the whole thing stack packs into the bag.

You then take it below and put it on a likely shelf or on an unused bunk.

The panels have been tested with gust loading a up to 38kn and survived intact. Normally you use this at anchor and the boat’s weather cocking will protect the Flin from significant loading. For safety I would take it down once it started gusting 30-35kn. I don’t see that as any worse than having to lift a hydrogenerator once batteries are charged, or having to tie down a wind gen in winds over 40 kn.

[RaymondR]

I would not classify that as "cool". Maybe my age is showing here but it looks a bit "Rube Goldberg" to me,

[Na Mara]

I went looking for a equivalent system with suit case panels. The best I could find was

https://www.amazon.se/Offgridtec-vik...95024303&psc=1

Roughly 650 euro for 200W and an MPPT. Three of these strung together with bungee from boom to guardrail on the sunny side of the boat would deliver much the same output as the Flinsail with much the same labour and storage implications. You’d also have to remove them in winds greater than 40kn.

Pros over the flinsail:
1 3000€ cheaper
2 cheap and easy to add additional power, ( the boom is 6m long so you could probably get 2kW of these up if you wanted to).
3 cheap to replace
4 would shade the pilothouse (specific to my boat)
5 multiple parallel mppts should cope with shading better

Cons over the flinsail
1 in the way
2 can’t be meaningfully adjusted for inclination beyond choosing a side of the boat. Efficiency loss here is probably offset by the efficiency gain of multiple mppts.
3 wouldn’t look as cool IMHO

[Uncle Bob]

Originally Posted by Na Mara

I went looking for a equivalent system with suit case panels. The best I could find was

https://www.amazon.se/Offgridtec-vik...95024303&psc=1

Roughly 650 euro for 200W and an MPPT. Three of these strung together with bungee from boom to guardrail on the sunny side of the boat would deliver much the same output as the Flinsail with much the same labour and storage implications. You’d also have to remove them in winds greater than 40kn.

Pros over the flinsail:
1 3000€ cheaper
2 cheap and easy to add additional power, ( the boom is 6m long so you could probably get 2kW of these up if you wanted to).
3 cheap to replace
4 would shade the pilothouse (specific to my boat)
5 multiple parallel mppts should cope with shading better

Cons over the flinsail
1 in the way
2 can’t be meaningfully adjusted for inclination beyond choosing a side of the boat. Efficiency loss here is probably offset by the efficiency gain of multiple mppts.
3 wouldn’t look as cool.

From your posts I am guessing that #3 is the one of most interest to you.

[Na Mara]

People constantly spend money to look good, to make their home look good, their garden look good. What’s so strange about spending money to make your boat look good?

It certainly would be a talking point where ever you go. Imagine all the new friends I’ll make ;-)

[Na Mara]

Being a bit serious, it probably is a better use of my money to go with the fold out alternative jury rig option and put the money saved into a bigger LFP bank and better hydro generation. Im looking for solar back up on the hook between charging opportunities on the move. Ideally, I’d like to arrive fully charged and just live off the battery until departure. The solar is just for when that proves impossible. I use 500-750Wh a day at rest and I move every 5 days or so. A 4-5kWh bank (400Ah) will probably be enough but I’d like to go 6-8kWh to cover higher loads and or longer stays. The difference in a 4 kWh LFP bank and a 8 kWh one is 3000 € so maybe that is where the money should go.

Still think it’s a cool idea though

[rslifkin]

That's impressively little power use at rest. Honestly, even a single fixed panel on the pilothouse might keep up with that even with the shading concerns. I'd be inclined to try it and then do the foldouts if it's not enough.

The Flinsail is kinda cool, but it seems slightly impractical, but more importantly, it's just too expensive. My 2x 410w panels cost me just about $550 delivered. With MPPT controllers, wiring, mounts, etc. the all in cost was somewhere around $1200 for 820w of solar. Install was DIY, so cost was materials only.

[Na Mara]

At rest my consumption is LED lights, an anchor light, an efficient top loading fridge, water pump and charging of mobiles, the electric winch handle and occasionally the outboard battery. Maybe I put the beer fridge on if I have the power for it but that’s optional. In cold climates the diesel heater may go on as well depending on how cold it is and how much power I have.

Underway its most of that plus all the instrumentation, power roller reefing, VHF, radar, AIS, and the the big hydraulic autopilot. Power consumption more than doubles to around 1.5-2 kWh.

[250224]

Originally Posted by rslifkin

The Flinsail is kinda cool, but it seems slightly impractical, but more importantly, it's just too expensive. My 2x 410w panels cost me just about $550 delivered. With MPPT controllers, wiring, mounts, etc. the all in cost was somewhere around $1200 for 820w of solar. Install was DIY, so cost was materials only.

What panels do you have? Rigid? Efficiency (W/m2)?

Personally - to be honest - I'd probably buy some random cheap chinese flexible panels and build / try with that. However if you compare with e.g. Solbian panels a price of ~8 € / W is not totally out of line. It all depends on the quality of the panels Flinsail uses (which I don't know).

If a cheap flexible panel has a defect (which is not unheard of...) and I need to replace them two or three times more often, the numbers are not advantageous any more. From an ecolocigal point of view it's also, sorry, bull$hit.

Regarding practicabillity I disagree. At least from the video it looks super-easy: take out the panels from the bag, raise them and connect a cable. One extends the available space. Folding panels spoil the deck, especially on a rather small yacht they are always in the way and every time you have to climb around them you'll be happy

[rslifkin]

Originally Posted by blu3534

What panels do you have? Rigid? Efficiency (W/m2)?

Mine are rigid panels. They're the Trina Solar TSM-410-DE15H(II) 410 watt panels. I paid about $200 each (plus shipping) for them. Efficiency specs at 20.2% and I've seen both of them slightly exceed rated output under really good sun. If you can fit the big house sized panels like these, they're much cheaper per watt than smaller panels (or non-rigid panels) due to economy of scale (they sell far more panels in this size range, so costs are lower).

[Na Mara]

The panels are apparently German made and of sufficient quality to withstand repeat gust loading of of winds at 38kn. They look like Solara panels to me which would fit the description. Solara retail at about 3€ a watt. That would make the panels and mppt about 2500 of the 5000. The rest would be materials, maybe 500, labour, maybe 1000, and then pretax profit. After tax the mark up is probably about 20-15% on each unit. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. They need to eat to.

[Deep Blue Water]

Originally Posted by Na Mara

5000 € is a lot less than an arch with 600w of panels plus controllers wiring and installation. This installation is instead of a solar arch.

It was pre-coffee and I left out detail - I was thinking along the lines of buying the SS tubing, bending and welding it. I recently helped a friend rebuild his mangled pulpit (he didn't want the insurance company to know), it was the type where you can exit the boat.

We made a pattern for the various bends, purchased the tubing, had a machine shop bend some sections and then weld them up. It was surprisingly easy, the cost of the tubing/welding was approximately $1100, however we had to polish it - THAT was a pain in the neck. I'd definitely consider this approach for an arch.

[Nord Sal]

They are quite vague on the testing saying, "tested to gusts of 38 kts." What precisely does that mean?

One gust? For how long? In a lab environment?, etc.?

I suspect just the normal movement from light (and heavier) winds, and the motion from deployment, take down, stowage, and redeployment would be the undoing of the panels.

[sailor_ed]

What happens when the wind comes from somewhere other than the sun's rough location? How adjustable is it?

[Na Mara]

DBW not everyone wants or can fit an arch. It’s out of the question on my boat. On smaller boats or boats with slim transoms you would never get 600W on an arch anyway.

Nord Sal I can only interpret their claim one of two ways. Either they had the rig up on a boat in weather where it was gusting 38kn, or they tested the panels fixed at the corners in a wind tunnel with cyclic wind pressure. Either way they panels survived cyclic gusts of 38kn. The latter is a more stringent worst case test as the former could have been at anchor with the boat weather cocked, in which case the panels would have been edge on the wind. (In the real world this is their typical attitude to the wind as most cruisers will anchor when using this system.

Sailor_ed the panels tilt through 180 degrees athwarts and they can be swung out to port and starboard as far as the boom swings. Basically it will be very rare that you can’t optimally orientate them for the sun. That will only happen with the solar azimuth directly ahead and to a lesser extent astern.