Flexible Solar – VHB Tape: 5 years later
About five years ago, I installed 800 watts of flexible solar panels on the roof of my Winnebago Outlook. They served me well on many adventures, but it’s finally time to say goodbye.
Back in 2020 and 2021, I caught the solar bug—hard. Rudy (my husband) and I were doing a lot of boondocking, and trying to rely on lead-acid batteries and the generator just wasn’t cutting it. So we started our solar journey with a portable 200W panel and a 200Ah lithium setup. That quickly grew to 400Ah and eventually led us to install rooftop panels.
Here are the blog posts (a walk down memory lane)
1) https://blog.michaelamerz.com/wordpress/going-lithium-and-solar/
2)https://blog.michaelamerz.com/wordpress/installing-solar/
3) https://blog.michaelamerz.com/wordpress/solar-with-air-gap/
Now, as we’re getting the motorhome ready for another season of travel, I’ve had to tackle a few unexpected repairs. The control board for the water heater completely died (as in “dead as a doornail”), and the inverter gave up the ghost too. Apparently, five years is the expiration date for a lot of things! After replacing both, I ran some load tests—and that’s when I noticed the solar wasn’t keeping up. Despite a bright, blazing New Mexico sun, my 800W system was barely pushing 300W. Something was definitely off.
After some troubleshooting, I found one panel was completely dead. Even the ones that were “working” were barely producing half their rated output. The verdict? It was time to pull them all down and switch to different panels.
Back in 2020, flexible solar panels were still something of a gamble. Mounting them with VHB tape instead of screws was a bit controversial, and I didn’t want to drill holes in the roof if I could avoid it. I took a chance, and while I’m replacing the panels now, I can say this with confidence:
I absolutely trust VHB tape.
If you prep your surfaces properly, it holds like nothing else. Some of my flex panels were mounted on rails, and those rails are still rock solid – after 5 years of blazing sun, freezing rain and solid ice. And a lot of traveling as well. Removing those rails was no small task—it took a sharp knife and a lot of elbow grease to get them to yield. But the knife just split the tape. As you can see below, he tape tore in half, with part of it sticking to the roof and the rest clinging to the rails. Now I’m left with the fun job of cleaning all that sticky residue.
Lesson learned? Flexible solar panels don’t last forever—especially in the brutal New Mexico sun. They got the job done for several years, and back then, I didn’t have the experience (or the confidence) to make more aggressive choices. I went with what seemed safest. But now, it’s time to level up.
Onward to the next phase—new panels, new possibilities, and hopefully (this time) twenty five years (or more) of sunny, solar-powered travels.
Michaela Merz is an entrepreneur and first generation hacker. Her career started even before the Internet was available. She invented and developed a number of technologies now considered to be standard in modern web-environments. She is a software engineer, a Wilderness Rescue volunteer, an Advanced Emergency Medical Technician, a FAA Part 61 (PPL , IFR) , Part 107 certified UAS pilot and a licensed ham . More about Michaela ..