Gavin Johnson was walking the aisles at the Vancouver Boat show when he came across an intriguing display. The owner of Ocean Performance, a yacht refit and repair company in Victoria, B.C., stopped in the Open Waters Solar booth to take a closer look at the company’s solar panels.
“We got to chatting and I think I had three projects that we were working on with other solar panel manufacturers,” said Johnson. “The thing that really stood out was that no one else was making composite laminated solar panels.”
Ocean Performance was working on a cabin top for a catamaran that Johnson wanted to cover in solar panels. The supplier he was working with proposed 16 panels that he said would be expensive and would require making 16 penetrations in the cored surface. Open Waters Solar could provide eight larger panels that produced more power and required half the surface penetrations.
“It was, ‘We have to do this,’” said Johnson. “It makes so much more sense.”
Angus started Open Waters Solar seeking to solve a problem. He had built a carbon 40-foot catamaran powered by an electric propulsion system.
The power for the motors was supplied by 16 110-watt semi-flexible solar panels. “On day one, they were great and we were generating a huge amount of power,” says Angus.
After a year, however, the power output dropped to as low as 60 percent. “The biggest issue with semi-flex panels is micro-cracking,” he says. “It’s a crack you can’t see and once the cell cracks, there’s a reduction in the current the cell can produce. When you put cells in a series, the amount of current produced is determined by the lowest performing cell.”
Angus knew nothing about solar panels when he sought to resolve the cracking issue. There are two types of panels, rigid traditional units you see on rooftops. There are also flexible panels, but they have not proven durable in the elements.
Angus and his team figured out how to encapsulate flexible solar panels in clear composites that protect them and still let the panels absorb the sun’s rays to store their energy.
“We buy Maxeon solar cells and solder them together with robotics,” says Angus. “Then we encapsulate them into the fiberglass. The panels can bend, but the fiberglass maintains its integrity.”
Open Waters Solar has quickly garnered attention from companies in the sail and powerboat realms that want to build environmentally friendly boats.
“The response has been out of this world,” says Angus. “I have a stack of business cards 12-inches long from trade shows I went to last year that I haven’t called back because we don’t have the production capacity, yet.”
One standout project for Open Waters Solo was with Archipelago Yachts. The manufacturer was building an 80-foot cat for a customer who wanted a vessel with extended range and a deck that could support a helicopter. He also wanted it to be sustainable and environmentally friendly. Open Waters Solar supplied 23 kW of electric power through solar panels. “The deck we’re putting them on is the helipad,” said Angus.
Open Waters also has completed a 3.2 kW solar system on a 48-foot hybrid motoryacht for Sirena Marine. The solar system will provide the power for the HVAC systems, the galley, water heating and more.
Open Waters Solar offers a 115-watt and 170-watt composite solar panels; prices start at $698 and $1,031, respectively, which Angus says is competitive with other high-end flexible panels.
“Because our panels are so durable and don’t crack, we can reliably put them in high-voltage strings and efficiently charge the batteries,” says Angus.
The company also offers an inflatable floating solar panel that an owner can set out behind a boat when it’s at anchor, connect the cables and let the sun charge the battery. Four drogues help it stay in the water.
The 300-watt panel has its own circuit breaker and it can hang vertically on a boat’s side. It can also be broken down to a 22-inch long package that weighs about 20 pounds and stores in a bag. Prices start at $2,879.
When asked about some boaters’ concerns about having lithium-ion batteries on board, he says, “If you buy quality marine batteries, they’re as safe as any other battery.”
Open Waters Solar is scaling up production and Angus says by the middle of next year he hopes to be producing 12 kW per day of flexible solar panels.
Angus realizes that solar and electric power aren’t for all boats. “You can’t pack enough batteries in a motoryacht to cross the Atlantic,” he says. “But in the world of sailboats, there’s no reason why one can’t be electric.”