Any experiences with these panels?

I currently have 4 NE-80EJEA 80 Watt modules and am really satisfied with their performance... that's why I was thinking of sticking with Sharp!

Regards
Brian

I've got 22 Sharp 208W panels installed Aug this year, and discovered on one of them some sort of burned/brown/discolored area at one corner, in the inner layers. Awaiting installers inspection after Thanksgiving. I'm hoping it's just a fluke and not a rehash of the Kyocera bad panel situation.

But have you noticed a decrease in performance?

I have also read that the SHARP NT-175U1 are slightly old and not in production any more.

The panels don't have a mfg date, I assumed since everything is backordered, they would be fresh stock from TN made in the spring this year.

I have noticed a dropoff, which is why I got up on the roof for a hose down, and cleaning the gunk off the panels did not have any effect. The sun is also moving south, and I don't know how that affects the perf. Since I was up washing, I had no meters with me to test a single panel. I have 2 strings of 11, paralled in a Jbox on the roof, so 1 string may have a decrease, or it may just be the sun angle. I'm quite surprised the dirt did not affect the panels output much at all. No more than a 100 W difference, which is negligble on a 3,500 array

i see you're still in search of some answers mike. if you can't measure and compare individual pvs then can you measure the voltage of each string with no loads on them? be carefull as the open circuit voltages will be at 488.4v. this would have to be on a cloudless day around solar noon as the indication could be as low as the voltage of one cell to be missing or about .6v. if the problem is bad enough that the entire section of that pv's output has been effected severely enough the bypass diodes come into play and the voltage drop would be worse for the pv and thusly for the string too.
if this does give an indication that pv's cell could be bad you will have to go measure it's output on that pv compared to a pv without a mark on it to confirm the pv with the mark on it is the cause. the oc voltage of the pv should be 44.4v. don't look for the exact voltage specified so much as that pv being lower than the others proving that cell is bad or maybe a soldering point has burned up due to a bad connection internally. in either case this is proof for the warranty coverage. my personal opinion is that it is a bad soldering point the factory made and forcing current through that high resistance point created the burn area you see on the glass. it's up to you to see if there is indeed a problem with the pv's output in addition to your visual observation of the pv.

Well, I got a photo of the bad spot, on a forum here:
http://www.wind-sun.com/smf/index.php?t ... 8#msg13858
(dang - must be member to view photos there, sorry)

I'm pretty sure the easiest way measure it, is to switch off the inverter,
have the fellow on the roof disconnect one string, and reconnect inverter.
Use the inverter to measure volts/amps. Disconnect, switch strings, and remeasure, disconnect inverter, connect all strings and continue to run system, and hope enough of a loss shows to see the 2 strings are not balanced anymore. If not now, I'm sure the "spot" will keep growing till it has an effect. I guess I have 20 years to make the claim.

I also found there is a lot of RTV over the panels, and that's a PITA to clean all the bits of it off.

ok i see it now. doesn't appear to be a burn mark from the solder tabs areas. was it there when you got the pvs or did it develope later? in any case it seems to be either in the glass or under it and would shade that part of that cell of that module. i'd say contact them about a warranty replacement. they can't deny that this would degrade the pv output. let us know either here or the other forum or both as to what they say about it.
it is possible that the pv is still within their +/- specs though and they may get out of replacing it.