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1. The solar panels on a house: 3.5 by 6 ft. long

   • Pros: inexpensive

   • ​Cons: 75 pounds and took too much space; we want it lightweight

2. Make Our Own: We were going to make a roof out of carbon fiber. This is done by laying up carbon fiber. To do this, first put the carbon fiber in a vacuum (piece of plastic) and put the carbon fiber stranded material down. Take another layer of carbon fiber and lay it down so that the strands crisscross. Coat it with resin and then seal plastic over it and suck all the air and excess resin out so it is light and thin. Then embed the solar cells in the resin and run the wires through to collect energy. This is super lightweight. The cons are that a high quality cell that gets 3.5 Watts is about $5, and we needed about 500 W. That would mean a cost of $500 just for the cells so we decided against this.

3. Lightweight flexible solar panels are sold from China and are advertised at 200 W. They are 40 in by 20 in.​

   • After calculating the energy, we found they were falsely advertised (by incorrectly multiplying their actual Amps and Volts to get Watts) and could not actually make 200 W.

4.  100 W Solar Panels, 40 in by 20 in, 18.5 V x 5.5 A = 101.75 Watts. These are flexible panels that are good for the bumpy ride, and they are lightweight. We went with these.

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