ideas/uses for a broken panel

[Gareth J]

One panel in my last array arrived broken. I installed it when doing as I didn't realise it was broken until near the end. They've replaced it, although I've not go around to swapping it yet. It's still generating ok, both strings quite similar but will swap it out sometime.

That leaves me with a fully crazed, but working, panel to do something with.

There's physical space on a vertical south wall or even north facing garage, but no inverter space.

Any bright ideas?

[rogeriko]

Unfortunately the damp will creep in through the cracks and corrode the panel from the inside. Also the cracks act like a mirror and stop the light getting to the cells unless the panel is directly pointing at the sun. Change it as soon as possible. Its basically useless. There are a lot of cracked panels for sale on ebay cheap but its not worth the effort to use it.

[Mr Gus]

Do you remember a thread on st elsewhere, Ivan had pallets of them with smashed glass, which he removed the remnants (cleaned them up, presumably with isopropanol alcohol checked there solder connections of the cells & reglazed the units to power his new home?

Maybe someone with a better memory is able to elucidate more clearly

How badly off is the glass? If not a mass of grazing ..this Maybe ... https://www.instructables.com/Broken-So ... ir-Simple/

Or if the top glass is pretty extreme.. (vinyl car wrap clear coat)

(We've had a clear protection wrap on the Skoda yeti since before we bought it at auction, it has held well, the car is white & parked in the full sun, so that's 2+ years in our possession at least, doing motorway speeds) ...cheap to try, IF the shards have not fallen out / picked out.

[Stan]

Use it to power a fountain or fans on DC. Voltage will be down but still surprisingly effective.