Seasons greetings from La Paz, Mexico. Nice place to be fixing the
boat, don't you know . Even in these dark times I've been thinking
that there was a problem with my solar array and now that we are in a
town I finally got around to ripping off the suspect panel to inspect
it. It is a Kyocera KC80 and is a laminate of glass, EVA glue and PVF
backing. A small section of backing has pulled away from the glass
causing a fault in the ground line for about 2/3 of the cells. I can
make the panel work by squeezing in just the right place so I'm pretty
sure this is the only problem with the module. I tested the bypass
diodes and connectors and they are good. Now, I just e-mailed kyocera
and don't yet know what their response will be. In the event that I
have to fix the module I can see two ways to go about it. The
delamination is at the edge of the panel. My current "fix" for
testing purposes uses a clamp on the frame to press a couple of nuts
up against the plastic which squeezes the contact closed. I could tap
the fame and make-up a cam to clamp the thing. Another way to go
about it would be to carefully slice open the blistered section of
plastic and attempt to fix the contact and then seal it up with a
bunch of goop. I'm thinking 5200 for the goop. I'm not sure what to
use to join the connections. They are thin foil and already damaged
so I think solder is out. Some kind of conductive room temperature
glue would be ideal. Is there any such thing? Does anyone know the
Spanish for it? Or I might epoxy a bit of silver or copper foil
across the joint... Not quite sure of how that would work in detail,
though...

Any ideas out there?

Thanks!

--Tom.