hello I'm your host Dan Rojas and it has been raining for about six or seven days now we have gotten way over a foot of rain where we live see the ditches are completely full over here this is a tropical system so there really hasn't been a lot of lightning with this or else I wouldn't be out here when it's raining but I wanted to show you something I've been wanting to test a solar panel that I made for a while this is about four foot deep by the way I've been wanting to test the solar panel but we just haven't had the sunlight to do it what I have done is just let it sit here for the past few days actually when it was not so deep I had it over in there I let it sit out overnight but goose eggs anyways I just want to show you the waterproofing on this panel if you look there is absolutely no water infiltration on the front part of these cells there's no humidity these are the spots where the resin came through remember I had mentioned that these cells are cracked so some of the resident came through that is not infiltration of water it would be impossible for it to go in the middle if it did have infiltration it would be up here along the sides and everything is sealed everything is fine this panel actually produces a voltage even with this but I just wanted to show you that this has been sitting underwater in this weather for about six days now before I did that this camera is fogging up a little bit it has been in our air conditioner in our house in Florida you cannot take anything from any any cameras of any kind in the morning time from inside a house AC out into the humid air because it'll just fog up if you have a tape camera it'll take condensation detected on the record head so you have to wait about two hours to record anything this panel has been in and out before the rain started I had it in and out of our house every day so if there was any humidity that would have built up in front of these cells going in and out of your AC in the morning would have done it the panel did fog up but it was strictly on the outside this is all just outside stuff everything works so right now we have a nice break those clouds and this panel over here is hooked up to this grid tie inverter and it is producing a solid 45 watts this these cells are 1.8 watts apiece so they should total 65 watts your grid tie inverter will actually take a little bit of the power usually about 10 watts so that would put this at a true 55 watt panel now some of these cells are broken all solar panels generally don't give you the full why did you buy an 80 watt panel you might get actually there's some dirt up there too so that's probably not helping much what's that rebuild and see if that helps but you generally don't get 80 watts from an 80 watt panel especially when you go through a grid tie inverter that bumped it up to 46 this panel has been sitting in the rain you see the wood got a little damaged there I didn't treat this wood because I wanted to show people that wood can get wet and not warp not top out of place not crack and break your glass like some people say you would if you look right here where the resin has spilled over on this this clear spot right here this clear spot is because the resin was there so if you want to treat your wood you should do that what you want to do is put a clear varnish over this preferably a nice white spray paint is going to protect the wood from some UV and I don't know if you can see that but we are bouncing around 50 49 to 50 which is really good considering that there are broken pieces weather and then there's also the spots where the resin came through doesn't really affect it much at all if this does yellow it is such a thin layer that the light's still going to come through pretty good and that's all that you really care about let's just say 45 watts with this panel these cells were the broken cells I actually like I was I paid 50 cents apiece for them so we have 36 18 dollars in the broken cells the glass was free the frame was three bucks so that's 21 dollars the resin on this was about twenty dollars that's about $40 tape wiring maybe 45 dollars so we're still below a dollar a watt with this but everything is sealed up this is the same panel we built the same one that's been sitting in the rain I'm going to clean it up and then go ahead and waterproof this and use it this is that panel in action to the good tie inverter I'm your host Dan Rojas thank you for watching and enjoy our videos