Renogy Solar Panel

[John Bowers]

Renogy makes low cost flexible solar panels-perfect for small to medium size sailboats. *The 100W panel was advertised to be “Extremely Flexible, up to 240° with seamless integration with diverse roof shapes“ and carries a 10 year warranty. *

It worked fine for 2 weeks, gently arched over the boom, but then imploded and overheated. After reviewing photos of the deployment, Renogy said that it violated the warranty. Don’t be misled by the low price for this defective product.

[emilecantin]

Honestly, I think they were right to deny your claim. Flexible panels are not meant to be installed "free-floating", nor are they meant to be flexed repeatedly. A bit of research would've told you that the intended use is installing on curved surfaces (e.g the deck of a boat). They even say it on the product page:

Mounting Recommendation: Modules must be mounted using silicone structural adhesive on the backside of the panel, grommets are only to be used for non-mobile applications

Your pic clearly shows elastic straps trying to bend the poor thing against your boom; all it took was maybe a stronger gust of wind to overcome what little internal structure it had. For an application like this, a rigid panel would make more sense; it has a frame to take the loads.


I've dealt with Renogy's support for a warranty claim, and they were very fair.