Just thought I'd throw these out there since there's still some people making homebrew panels out there.
Got a deal on a half dozen 28"x76" tempered double pane windows that had leaked water between the panes. The glass is a little too big for these panels but I'll take what I can get. Glass was really floppy once I cut the aluminum spacer piece out. I thought about it for a few days and decided to silicone (2) 2x4s on the back of one piece to stiffen it up. Seems to work, also makes the thing pretty heavy but it does give me something to mount the panel with too. I'm using 36-cell strings, two of them. 18 up and down give me one circuit, then I did it again to make another. I'm putting 4 wires out of the thing so I can go 12 or 24 volt. Cells are stuck to the glass with "primerless auto glass adhesive" one dab in the center of each cell. On Monday, the whole thing goes off to the glass shop to get sealed up like a double pane window, like my last one.
I was getting about 19.0 Voc and 3.0 Isc. Kind of a hazy sun, The numbers should change a little with the top sheet of glass and a full sunny day.
These things are getting bigger!
