Triangular shaped panels

[SolarCity]

Has anyone seen the Trienergia panels? Look like a fairly decent system.

Could be handy on a lot of roofs where optimising the space available is tricky.

 

[infinity]

They do look good, you have to use there square panels as well to match them though

 

[SolarCity]

Yep, and they're not cheap. But I'm looking forward to having a look at them. I suppose it'll be a while before PV*Sol catches up.

 

[John Allen]

It is frustrating that you cant plan the installation in PV*Sol yet, it will be a question for the manufacturer when I get to see them.....

 

[Gavin A]

segen's training for them was apparently appalling, full of misinformation.

Key points of info they must have got wrong being the number of bypass diodes, and apparently indicating that they would need solar edge to work, which is complete bobbins.

From what I can see they probably either split the square panel into 2 and leave the triangle as a whole panel, or split tha square panel into 4 and the triangle into 2 with the bypass diodes, which would give equal numbers of cells, voltage, etc between the strings of cells. There are no clues to this that I can see in the documentation.

 

[SolarCity]

segen's training for them was apparently appalling, full of misinformation.

I'm planning on going to the training later this week.

I'll see what info I can gather. Hopefully they've upped their game.

 

[Ian-LS]

Yes the training was a bit of a mess, trying to show off their design tool and weren't able to answer basic design questions about the triangle panels.

Hopefully they will have gone away and done a bit more background research into the panels so they can ask installers questions better.

 

[SolarCity]

When did you do the training?

 

[Ian-LS]

Last Thursday i went. Supposed to be an all morning session, started at 10 am done by 11.20 am

 

[SolarCity]

Hmm.... I'm booked in for Nottingham later this week. I hope I won't be wasting my time.

Did you get anything out of it? I have a few fairly obvious questions I need answering which I'm hoping they'll be able clear up.

Are you going to be offering it yourselves?

 

[whinmoor]

Last Thursday i went. Supposed to be an all morning session, started at 10 am done by 11.20 am

Did you get a free Toblerone?

I got a free Boost bar once for chatting about the iBoost for 10 minutes!

 

[Ian-LS]

No actually.....think I'll ring Segen to complain. Where is my Toblerone!

 

[Earthstore]

If you went on a training day for those panels that produce "at night" wonder if you would get After Eights?

 

[Gavin A]

If you went on a training day for those panels that produce "at night" wonder if you would get After Eights?

probably, but I bet it'd just be packet of empty after eight sachets.

 

[SibertSolar]

There's always more empty ones than full ones left in the box isn't there! I mean, how hard is it to throw the wrapper in the bin?!!

OT - I heard today that the triangles are not handed and that the square panels are actually rectangular, interesting though, if a little pricey - bit niche I guess?

 

[Worcester]

Polys : The 'Square' panels are based on a 7 x 8 (56 cell) module and the "triangular" 7 x 7 (7+6+5+4+3+2+1 = 28 cells) so they are not 'handed' both 156x156mm cells
Monos: The 'Square' panels are based on a 8 x 9 (72 cell) module and the "triangular" 8 x 8 (8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1 = 36 cells) so they are not 'handed' both 125x125mm cells

 

[Ian-LS]

Still need to get my head around which inverters can be used with them, not sure they would make sense financially if you had to use solar edge.

 

[Gavin A]

any string inverter.

the cells are identical, the ampage is identical, the voltage on the triangular panel is exactly half the voltage on the square panel, so it's no different at all to having 3 strings of 20 cells connected in series in a standard 60 cell panel.

If segen really were saying they thought they needed solar edge, then they need to get some better trained technical staff.

what you couldn't do is to run a triangular and a square panel in parallel for battery charging or something, which is really where a lot of the ingrained folk memory of panels needing to have identical voltages comes from I think.

 

[t4sltd]

Went to Segen training this afternoon and it was very poor. Apparently you can model in PVSys by using the 'square' panel and replacing every 2 triangles with one 'square' one. There is only one triangle module available meaning the cell sub-strings run up-down or left-right depending which way you orientate the panel. This means it is almost impossible to design a system with good shade performance as sub-strings don't all point the same way. The panels made in China from unknown Chinese cells and the mounting system manufacturers have not yet said in writing they support them.

 

[Ian-LS]

That was my conclusion from the training. They are a watch this space kind of panel.