Aliexpress and eBay successes and failures...

More stuff for the bus arrived the other day. One thing was a bluetooth monitor for the Renogy charge controller. Another was another flexible solar panel. Then there were connectors etc. Everything came from China, naturally.

The Bluetooth monitor is going to be a challenge as it arrived with the wrong connector. No mention of a connector type had been made on the advert and since the only one I'd seen had an RJ45 connection, this one having a JSP PH1.0 connection would throw the best laid plans askew. That will require some research. I have spare RJ45 connectors and an RJ45 crimping tool from when I occasionally had to make up data cables in a previous life.

A while ago I ordered a 30W flexible solar panel from eBay. That's the one on the right with the mounting holes and the glossy surface. It was not actually 30W. It was 10W so I filed for a refund from eBay as that was fraud. Today the panel on the left arrived from Aliexpress. That was advertised as 20W but my meter says 10W. 

Just to make sure I was measuring it right, I had the thing flat on its back at midday with a cloudless sky. The meter read 10W and sometimes up to 13W. Switching that panel for a known 20W panel, that panel read 20W and sometimes up to 21W. Clearly with a control sample and no clouds the 10W panel has been mis-sold.

The backs of the panels are conspicuous for their lack of information. Normally on the backs of panels there is important information such as wattage, maximum power point etc. These are blank as though somebody peeled off the stickers in order to conceal what they were selling. This is pretty typical for a lot of Chinese sellers. They know they're out of reach and they know that most people just won't test anything they buy. For those that do, they'll often give refunds with no problem and only occasionally need the eBay jackboot up their backsides.

Not long ago I went through a bad patch with eBay with just about everything turning out to be fraudulent. Aliexpress thus far has been better. There are the same fraudsters there though - people selling batteries advertised as a phenomenal capacity that are nowhere near that capacity, people misselling solar panels etc. It is rare for somebody to sell something and for nothing to arrive. That has happened though and quite recently too. 

The fact the panel turned out to be 10W is a disappointment as I had expected better. Having said that, it's still usable. I just have to get up to the bus roof with tape and spacers to secure it while allowing for airflow. I had not realised before I removed the vandalised panel just how much of the bus power came from that single 15W panel.

Now I have two 10W flexible panels I shall have to seek out some white rubber filler compound/tape to space them off the roof and I shall have to secure them to the roof using adhesives. 20W should give me at least 100WH of power on a fairly average day. That's way more than I use most days.