What Type of Solar Panel Should You Buy?

Portable vs. Rigid Solar Panels: An Initial Comparison

415 watt bfacial panel from Sirius PV, 400 watt portable panel from Anker Solex. The rigid panel is $195. And Anker's portable panel is nearly $900. Was that $700 price gap worth it? Personally, we don't think so, but maybe after this video you guys will. So, let's find out.

So, welcome back to the lab where our opinions cannot be bought. When we review power stations, we almost always recommend you guys not to buy their portable folding solar panels, but we never really go into depth on why. There's obviously a case to be made for a foldable portable solar panel. But since we always recommend not to buy them, today we're going to explain our case against them.

As always, we will leave links to any of the products we talk about in the description down below, as well as any coupon codes that we can get to help save you guys some money where possible. Or if you guys want to support the channel for free, you can make sure you're subscribed if you're not already. Anyways, let's jump into it.

The Illusion of Portable Convenience

So, aside from the obvious price gap, the main driver behind getting a portable foldable solar panel versus getting a rigid panel is going to be convenience. People see a foldable solar panel and they assume it's worth the extra money. It looks like it's pretty easy to set up, tear down, and it's much simpler to kind of lug it around.

But unless you're someone that goes camping very frequently, maybe you live in a van or an RV, or you have extremely limited space to store your panels and you're only planning on pulling them out after a storm or in an emergency, we would argue that that portability, the simplicity of picking it up by a handle and walking it around is the only thing that portable panels really have going for them.

Even if you broke this down all the way down to a camping size solar panel, a 100 W foldable panel is still about 200 bucks. You can get a rigid 100 W panel for like $50. And at the end of the day, the size comparison isn't way off when they're folded down. It's not like you're saving a ton of room storing these things. Anyways, so the main differences between a portable folding panel and a rigid panel of equal wattage come down to a few main things.

Durability: A Key Differentiator

And the first one is durability. No matter how you slice it, a rigid panel is more durable. It's got aluminum housing, tempered glass, and an EVA encapsulation. Basically, rigid panels are a giant weatherproof sandwich.

Portable panels use thicker laminates. They're usually made with some sort of fabrics. They have kickstands and hinges that eventually will wear out. And common sense will just show you that things are going to tend to bounce off the rigid panels where they're going to tend to bend the folding panels. For example, hail or something falling in the yard is likely just going to strike the rigid panel and bounce right off. When you hit the folding panel, they're very flimsy. Like, you can grab it and just bend it with your hands. very easily. So, those are going to be a lot more prone to actually having an impact crack or like little micro fractures in the panels. And if you actually look at this 400 W panel in our example, it's basically four 100 W panels run together. If you were to fracture a piece of that, you lose a significant amount of output from your panel. Not saying that the rigid panels cannot break or be harmed, but once a portable panel is damaged, you're basically screwed.

Portable panels also have to compete with handling damage. So, they're always being folded up and opened back up. They're being carried around, dropped, moved around a lot more frequently. Whereas, like you guys will see later in the video, if you're going to use a rigid panel temporarily, you're going to move it in and out, set it all up, it's a lot more of a solid design. So, even if you kind of bring it into the garage and it slips out of your hands and hits the ground, it's not going to bend the same way that a portable panel would and it'll kind of bend on impact. And if you just crack the corner piece of that panel, you lose the output for like the majority of that section.

Some of the smaller panels are pretty simple to set up, but something like this big 400 W anchor panel, every time we set it up, it's almost impossible to do it alone without it kind of bending and warping all over the place, and you can literally hear it creaking and cracking as you're setting it up. And every time I do it, I just think this this thing has a lifespan, and every time we set it up, we're closer to killing it.

Performance: Maximizing Your Solar Output

You also got to take a look at performance. two main things that make a rigid panel perform better than a portable panel. And sure, you can argue that a portable panel is easier mainly for like a 100 watt or 200 watt smaller size to kind of pick it up and run it out into the sunshine if where you had your panel starts getting shaded out by a tree or something like that. But aside from being able to actually move it, a rigid panel tends to perform better.

Sun Exposure and Angle

The first reason for that is that you'll see with portable panels, they're kind of individual smaller panels all strung together. And they tend to kind of bend and warp and not always have the perfect angle towards the sun. So if you have what's technically four 100 W panels and they're not all perfectly angled at the sun, they're all going to be slightly less efficient. They're also always rested directly on the ground. So, a tiny weed or even a tiny baby can cast a pretty good shadow on these panels, which starts to affect their performance really easily. Something like a rigid panel, it's just one giant flat piece of glass. All you have to do, get it high enough up off the ground that the weeds and the tiny babies aren't casting shadows at it. And make sure you have it angled nicely at the sun, and the whole thing will be angled nicely at the sun, and you won't really have to worry about it. It's not like it's going to kill the performance of the panel, but they're always going to be a little bit better just due to the fact that they're simply one piece facing the right angle. More sun equals more power.

Thermal Performance

More cool also equals more power, which is another place that the rigid panels just have a little bit of an edge. Typically, rigid panels are mounted up off the ground. They have a lot more air flow around them. They also just have a big surface area for air to hit on both sides to help keep them cool. They're not perfect, but they're better than a portable panel, which sits directly on the ground and is typically made of thicker fabrics and plastics and stuff that retains heat a lot. So, typically these panels will absorb the sun, but they're also absorbing the heat, which makes them hotter and less efficient. They're also sitting right on the ground, so they're trapping that heat in a little pocket on the ground, which again is just raising the temperature of the cells. And solar cells always perform best in cooler environments.

Bang for Your Buck: Cost-Effectiveness in Solar

And the final thing that we really need to look at is bang for your buck. The most important thing when going solar is how much power can you actually generate. Power equals freedom. And typically people go solar to gain energy independence. So the more power you have, the more independence you can have. The more expensive it is to go solar though, the less independence you feel like you have.

For example, right now those Anker 400 W panels are on sale. You can get two of them for just over $1,500. You can get 10 of these serious 415 bfacial panels for just under $2,000. For in and around the same price range, you can either have a 800 W array or you can have a 4,000 watt array. And convenience aside, even if you had to pay for panel stands and you had to pay for a little bit of extra for those rigid panels, you're still getting way more independence for your dollar.

Practical Solutions for Rigid Panel Deployment

And for everyone that's going to say, "But the portable panels are easier to pack up and put in my van or put against the wall in my garage so I can pull them out in case of an emergency." Our solution to that is, like we said earlier, if you live in a van or you live on the road and you only need a couple small foldable panels, go get them. There's not much you can say to argue that. But if you're looking to bring panels out in case of an emergency or you just have for whatever reason an array that you don't always need out, even if you live in an RV with a roof, for a lot cheaper than a single 400 W folding panel, you can mount multiple rigid panels to your roof. You can even buy little legs that clip onto the back of a rigid panel and you can basically slide it into your camper or whatever you're using. And you pull out the rigid panel, rest it on the ground, and the legs fold up from underneath it and you're good to go. The folding panel, sure, it compacts to a bit less, but not by much. If you were going to store these things inside of a vehicle, it'd be pretty easy to get fulls size panels in there anyways. And when you open them up, you have way more ground to cover with a folding panel than you do with a rigid panel. rigid panel is going to take up significantly less space when it's opened up.

If you're looking to do this at your home, what we would recommend is basically two things. One, you could leave these panels rested inside of your garage and you want to pull them out. You could get something like a Integra IR30 or the power racks. Those are two very simple system to set up. The power racks literally like a recycling bin. You can stack a bunch of them in your garage with a bunch of panels on the wall. after a storm or when you need that extra power, you throw the bin on the ground, drop a panel on it, and you're good to go. It literally takes 2 seconds. The Integra Rack's a little bit more work, but very similar. You could just stack all the legs when you need them, pull them out, drop a panel into them, and they're done. And so, if you're looking for something that you can kind of put away and pull back out, that's one route. The other thing is, since you're saving so much money going with rigid panels, buy a panel stand and then grab a couple 4x4s and some wheels from Home Depot and make it wheel around. That's what we do here at the lab. We have tons of panel stands that wheel around and you can keep them in your garage and when you need the power, you can wheel it out into the driveway. You're still going to save a ton of money buying a name brand panel stand and wheels and the 4x4s and everything versus just getting foldable panels.

There's lots of ways to get creative with these rigid panels, but if you want to go solar, we can't just recommend to you to go grab a portable panel when it's a significantly more expensive route to take and you can get a much better bang for your buck going with a rigid panel. If you want solar to be accessible to you and you want the most power for your money, go with a rigid panel. If you're a daily mover and you just can't not have a folding panel, go and grab one. But at least now you know what your money is going towards and you know that there are better ways to do it and tons of people out there making rigid panels work because they just make more sense within a budget.

Final Thoughts and Community Engagement

So that's pretty much all we got for you guys today. Make sure you're subscribed if you are not already. And let us know in the comments down below some ways that you guys are making rigid panels work versus portable panels in different situations to help everybody else out that might still be curious. Otherwise, we will catch you next time. Thank you so much for watching. Peace out and stay charged.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why are rigid solar panels generally recommended over portable folding panels?

A: Rigid panels are recommended due to their superior durability (aluminum housing, tempered glass, EVA encapsulation), better performance (one flat surface for optimal sun angle, better airflow for cooling), and significantly better bang for your buck, offering more power generation for the investment.

Q: What are the main drawbacks of portable folding solar panels?

A: Portable panels are less durable, made with fabrics and hinges that wear out, prone to bending and micro-fractures, and susceptible to handling damage. They also typically perform worse due to not maintaining optimal angles, sitting directly on the ground (leading to shading), and retaining more heat, which reduces efficiency.

Q: Are there cost-effective ways to make rigid solar panels portable or easily deployable for temporary use?

A: Yes, for emergency or temporary use, rigid panels can be stored in a garage using systems like Integra IR30 or power racks for quick deployment. For mobility, panel stands with wheels can be purchased or built using materials like 4x4s from a hardware store. For RVs, rigid panels can be mounted on the roof or equipped with clip-on legs for ground deployment, offering better value than most portable options. When looking for such solutions, it's always good to check for local and international suppliers, including options for canadian solar panels for sale, to find the best fit for your budget and needs.