Which panel produced more actual energy in this test?
The flexible panel generated 232 watt-hours over the full day, while the rigid produced 184. However, the flexible is a larger panel (7.1 sq. ft. vs. 5.8 sq. ft.), so on a per-square-foot basis their efficiency is nearly identical—7.3 W/ft² for flexible, 7.1 W/ft² for rigid. The difference is negligible.
At a glance
Length
13 min
Channel
Everyday Solar
Video from
Oct 2024
Rating
⭐⭐ Great video · 2/2
Best for
RV and trailer builders choosing between solar panel types; off-grid system designers weighing durability and cost.
What this video answers
Which panel produced more actual energy in this test?
Are flexible panels worth buying if they cost almost the same as rigid?
How much does panel tilt angle affect power output?
What's the most reliable way to mount a flexible panel?
Why does the rigid panel perform better in hot conditions?
Reads the guide aloud in your browser — free, no account.
Testing 100W Flexible vs. Rigid Solar Panels on a Trailer Roof
This video puts two competing solar panel types head-to-head in a real-world scenario: a 100W ECO-WORTHY rigid frame panel and a 130W ECO-WORTHY flexible panel mounted on an enclosed trailer roof. Host Scott conducts a full-day side-by-side power test, measuring actual watt-hour output across morning and afternoon sessions under variable cloud cover and real sun angles. The test bed is an enclosed trailer—a practical stand-in for RV and off-grid build applications where space and weight matter, but so does long-term reliability and cost.
This comparison is designed for RV and trailer owners deciding between lightweight flexible panels and heavier but proven rigid panels. Whether you're building a power system from scratch or upgrading existing solar, the video walks through the actual performance numbers, cost-per-watt math, and durability trade-offs that most product specs won't tell you. Scott also covers two mounting approaches—temporary sealant adhesive versus aluminum Unistrut racking—so you can see what a permanent install looks like.
Key Moments
Key Testing Moments and Results
Morning session power readings: flexible panel producing 46W at 10 a.m. versus rigid panel at 34W under identical conditions
Watts-per-square-foot efficiency: flexible at 7.3 W/ft², rigid at 7.1 W/ft²—nearly identical performance density
Cost-per-watt analysis: flexible at $1.56 per watt, rigid at $1.54 per watt—essentially a tie at today's prices
Panel angle impact demonstration: flat-mounted panels pulled only 640 W/m² irradiance, but tilting to 36° jumped performance to 928 W/m²
Durability concern: flexible panels mounted flush against hot surfaces can degrade within 2–3 years in high-heat climates, versus 20-year lifespan expected from rigid panels
What You Need to Know Before Choosing
Test conditions: Testing occurred on a partly cloudy day with moderate wind (78°F) and flat panel mounting—not peak output conditions, but realistic for many climates
Energy accumulation method: Both panels were tested for equal duration (2.25 hours morning, same afternoon window) with equipment swapped between them to eliminate meter bias
Panel size difference: The flexible panel is rated 130W vs. the rigid's 100W, so Scott normalized the comparison by calculating efficiency per square foot rather than absolute wattage
Mounting hardware shown: Temporary lap sealant for flexible (not recommended long-term), versus aluminum Unistrut with spring nuts and end clamps for permanent, adjustable rigid installations
Temperature stress: On hot, windless days (90–100°F), flexible panels mounted flat against metal surfaces heat up significantly and lose power output faster than rigid panels in the same conditions
Angle adjustment advantage: A tilted mount on a stationary trailer can boost power by 25–40%, so consider whether your install allows seasonal or manual angle changes
Common Questions About Flexible vs. Rigid Panels
Which panel produced more actual energy in this test?
The flexible panel generated 232 watt-hours over the full day, while the rigid produced 184. However, the flexible is a larger panel (7.1 sq. ft. vs. 5.8 sq. ft.), so on a per-square-foot basis their efficiency is nearly identical—7.3 W/ft² for flexible, 7.1 W/ft² for rigid. The difference is negligible.
Are flexible panels worth buying if they cost almost the same as rigid?
Scott's conclusion is no, unless you have extreme space constraints or need the weight savings. Flexible panels offer a shorter lifespan (typically 2–3 years in hot climates versus 20 years for rigid) and require flush mounting without airflow underneath, which accelerates heat degradation. The power advantage is too small to justify the durability trade-off.
How much does panel tilt angle affect power output?
Dramatically. Tilting the rigid panel from flat (0°) to 36° (the seasonal ideal angle in Scott's location) more than doubled output—from 42W to 84W on the same panel in the same light. This happens because the irradiance changes from 640 W/m² (flat) to 928 W/m² (tilted), so angle adjustability is worth building into your mount if your trailer or RV will stay in one place for weeks at a time.
What's the most reliable way to mount a flexible panel?
Scott does not recommend using lap sealant alone as a permanent adhesive for flexible panels, despite many DIY builders doing so. Instead, he recommends a dedicated aluminum rail system (Unistrut) with spring nuts, end clamps, and adjustable fasteners, which provides structural support, allows airflow underneath for cooling, and lets you reposition or upgrade panels later.
Why does the rigid panel perform better in hot conditions?
Rigid panels have an aluminum frame and back that allows air to circulate underneath, keeping the cell temperature closer to ambient. Flexible panels are glued flat to your trailer roof with no gap, so on a 95°F day the surface can climb to 140–150°F, which reduces power output and accelerates material degradation. Scott did not test extreme heat in this video, but it's a known weakness of flexible panels.
A unit of energy produced or used over time, calculated by multiplying power (watts) by duration (hours); used to measure total solar output over a test period.
Irradiance
The intensity of solar radiation hitting a surface, measured in watts per square meter; affects how much power a panel can produce at any given moment.
Watts per square foot
A measure of panel efficiency showing how much power output you get from the area the panel occupies; allows fair comparison between panels of different sizes.
Cost per watt
The purchase price of a panel divided by its rated power output; a standard way to compare the economic value of different panels.
Standard test conditions
Laboratory conditions (1,000 watts per square meter irradiance, 25°C cell temperature) under which solar panels are officially rated; real-world performance usually falls below these specs.
This video deserves credit for actually measuring real power output instead of just reading spec sheets or running theory. Scott tests both panels on the same day under the same light conditions, then normalizes for panel size so you're comparing apples to apples. The mounting hardware walkthrough and durability discussion also fill gaps that most "comparison" videos skip over.
What I found most valuable was the $1.56 vs. $1.54 per-watt cost analysis—it demolishes the marketing pitch that flexible is a bargain—and the section on thermal stress. For anyone serious about RV or trailer solar, this is a practical, honest breakdown that should guide your purchase. I'd recommend it without hesitation.
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I love the idea of lightweight flexible solar panels but will the actual performance be similar to a rigid solar panel. Today I will walk through testing of a 100W flexible vs 100W rigid solar panels mounted on a flat enclosed trailer roof. We will roll up the results at the end and provide Watts/ sq ft and $ / Watt in addition to a few other considerations.
DISCLAIMER: This video and description contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission.
Video transcript for “100W Flexible Vs 100W Rigid Solar Panels | Don't Buy Until You Watch!” Accessibility
A full written transcript of this video, provided for accessibility. Select any timestamp to jump the video to that moment.
how's it going you guys it's Scott with everyday solar today we're going to be testing out some flexible 130 W Eco worthy panels versus 100 wat ecoworthy rigid frame panels side by-side comparison up on top of this enclosed trailer it's a great test bed for an RV application an enclosed trailer
application where we have flat solar panels and we can really test them side by side on the same day to see what kind of power output they have but what are the tradeoffs that you need to consider for your project now in installations pretty straightforward I just used a little lap sealant which is a good
sealant and adhesive for RV and trailer applications to hold down the flexible panel flush to the aluminum surface of this enclosed trailer then my more permanent mount for panels on this trailer uses aluminum Unistrut which will give me a little more spacing from that surface and also a more secure
Mount but I'll show you a little bit more on that setup and specific Hardware here in a few minutes so let's get everything plugged in and kick off our testing so kicking things off in the morning session we got a Delta 2 from eow running through a conversion cable here and then up to our power
meter we're about 10 a.m. and we're reading out 20.4 Vols 2.2 amps resulting in about 46 Watts let's check the rigid frame side and then also check the intensity of the sun with a IR Radiance meter all right on this side we got the Delta 3 plus from ecoflow and we will be swapping these around so then in the
afternoon the flexible has the Delta 3 plus so it will try to cancel out any air that we might have all right so for the rigid frame early morning 10: a.m. we're looking at about 17.5 volts 1.75 is amps bounce around a bit and equaling about 34 Watts so let's check the E Radiance and then we'll go ahead
and let these run for a couple hours and look at the results in terms of how many Watt hours have we accumulated so with the Fluke meter we can get our e Radiance and also the surface temperature we're on the flexible side 414 watts per met squared you'd compare that to these panels the flexible being
a 130 watt panel that is under standard test conditions where you would have 1,000 watts per met squared and then the surface temperature is already up to 86° fah we'd be looking at about 77° fah for standard test conditions so it's heating up a little bit but definitely not considered hot conditions today we're
going to have some clouds in the sky I think those will increase over the afternoon hours so it'll be a pretty representative day it won't be the most that you'll be able to get out of these panels but it is a pretty standard day where you actually have pretty good Sun so we just finished up about 2 hours and
15 minutes of testing in the morning collected the numbers for wat hours and then switched over the equipment to make sure we're canceling out any error now right now the Eco worthy rigid frames only putting out about 42 Watt but I want to give you a few different reference points to make sure you're
making the right design for your use case here we have the Renegy 100 watt this is my favorite out of the four we've tested which were Harbor Freight Rich Soler Renegy and ecoworthy ecoworthy is the best bang for the buck because the price is usually so competitive but renogy really is
efficient for the square footage that you have how many watts per square foot area which can be critical on trailers and RVs but also when you look at the dollars per watt it's very competitive but the renogy right now in the same conditions is putting out 52 Watts so instead of the 42 Watts e worthy 100
watt rigid frames putting out this Renegy 100 watt rigid frames putting out 52 in the same conditions but let's go ahead and use this stick which will put this panel up to a 36° angle which is pretty close to the ideal angle for southern facing panels in my area for this time of year which is right at
about 32 degrees now with the correct angle instead of 52 so remember Eco worthy was 42 Renegy 52 when it was flat now with the correct angle we're looking at 84 Watts so just something you should consider if you're going to be stationary with your RV or your enclosed trailer should you build in some
mounting hardware that you can adjust the angle to maximize what the power you're getting out of each of your panels and I can quickly show you with the E Radiance meter why that's such a dramatic difference difference so with the E Radiance meter for this time of day if I go flat we see we only get
about 640 watts per met squared now if I match this 36° angle as the panels tilted right now now we've moved up to 928 so the Watts we get for the surface area is that dramatically different when you go from your level horizontal flat surface to an ideal angle angle for the
direction your panels are facing so just something you really want to take into consideration when you're setting up your overall system design so a little bit more on the mounting now this is just temporary I use the lap sealant for the flexible that is strictly temporary that is not what I recommend permanent I
have seen people use a lot of that sealant adhesive underneath flexible and then that's what they use with some tape I do not recommend that I prefer something more like this aluminum Unistrut and I just have this temporarily again adhered down because it's pretty windy day so I didn't want
this panel to fly away but I'm actually going to drill down through there and put Riv nuts on the structural tubing that's going across here and then bolt this down and then this will give me the flexibility for mounting so how are we going to mount there I just got some of these spring nuts here which give you
the flexibility to put those in and then you just twist them and now you have have a nut that's threaded and you could use something like an end clamp here this one's just off Amazon again all the links in the description it comes with the hardware needed for standard solar racking but I just take that off and I'm
just using everything here and it also has the adjustability to go up or down so if you have a 100 watt panel you're going to go down to the lowest setting and then you can just thread that in or you could adjust it for a two 100 watt or 400 watt that might have a thicker frame and then that's how I'm doing my
end and then you could get mid clamps as well here if you wanted to have your panels back to back I will have a much longer video in the future when I put all the panels on the roof here but just wanted to give you a heads up just in case you had a project like this coming up now I love DIY and believe it or not
depending on your area there are ways that you can do your own complete grid tied roof mounted solar system to completely offset your monthly power bill I that just a couple months ago on a rental property I have installing a 4.8 KW system and saving a ton of money so you will see a link in the
description you can jump over to project solar and you can start going down that path with very little information to start seeing what the size of system you might need and what are the rough costs now for many of us we might initially think we're going to do it DIY but then family and job and everything catches up
with us but if that is the case and you still want to install the system you just need a pro to do it project solar can also help help you out there and match you up with the local installer so let's go ahead and jump in and take a look at these numbers so let's go ahead and look at the results we have that
morning session that was 2.25 hours Long Afternoon session of the same dur duration and really balanced out well so for the flexible morning section we had 118 and those are Watt hours because we're accumulating up the energy and then for the rigid that was 93 wat hours for the after afternoon session very
balanced where we picked up 114 additional wat hours so that'll bring us a total for the flexible of 232 wat hours then for the afternoon session over here for the rigid frame that's going to be 91 wat hours and then that will bring us a total of 184 Watt hours for our rigid now don't
forget we have a 30% larger in terms of power output rated panel with the flexible so that is 30% larger if we take these to the difference and then divide that by 184 this would be a 26% more energy was produced so really to make a smart decision we need to look at the area how large are these panels
to see how efficient they are in terms of making the most out of that space and then also take price into consideration so let me bring that up here and then those should give you the numbers you need to make a smart decision and we'll talk about a few other factors you should consider all right so I kind of
already filled everything out I do want to caution you these numbers should only be considered versus flexible rigid today for ecoworthy don't take the dollars per watt that we have here and then go look at another video of mine or others and compare those remember we had flat panels not angled perfectly on a
certain day where we were not getting a th000 watts per meter squared so you wouldn't want to compare these with other videos or other testing examples you just want to compare them against each other because both of those panels were going through exactly the same testing so actual power was 52 Watts so
if I took the energy that we accumulated up divided by the number of hours we ran 52 Watts for flexible 41 Watts for rigid then if I go in and I look at the area so we have our length times our width for square inches convert that to square feet 7.1 so the flexible is considerably
larger compared to 5.8 Square ft for the rigid then if we go to average cost this is a 12-month average cost on Amazon if you want to check what it is right now just look at the links right below the video in the description flexible is going to be a little bit higher at $81 and rigid is going to be $63 ecoworthy
panels are some of the most competitively priced on the market so these are actually pretty good prices then really the factors that we want to look at when we're designing our system and picking our hardware and I do understand you might have restrictions where you need exactly the right sized
panel I get that but these should help you out so watts per square feet how many watts could I produce and again this is just apples apples comparison because it is not perfect conditions and we did not angle the panels so we got 7.3 watts per square foot for the flexible and then 7.1 over here for the
rigid so pretty close but a small Advantage comes to the flexible panel and then dollars per watt is almost a wash so we're looking at a dollar 56 per watt again just on today just compared between the two and a154 per watt on the actual power we're putting out almost a wash right there so which one would I
pick for mine I'm going rigid all day long uh flexible although right out of the box you can see they perform fairly well it's only about 78 degrees Fahrenheit outside and we have quite a bit of wind today so that has helped to cool down that surface temperature if it was 90 95 100° f with no wind the
flexible panel sitting against that surface is going to heat up and the flexible panels are known to have a limited light and they will really start to degrade in terms of the power that they can put out you might be only talking two or three years but let me know your experience down in the
comments that helps out the rest of the viewers so rigid is going to hold up longer you're looking at more like a 20year lifespan which we expect with some of the larger 400 watt panels we put on our home so it's it's really no comparison unless there was a huge Advantage for flexible there is a weight
Advantage the flexibility can be nice for certain applications so those are an advantage but unless there was a massive power Advantage I would not go for the chance of early failures degradation over time much much quicker than rigid uh because there's just not that much advantage to them so that's my opinion
but also we pulled you guys the viewers and over 130 people responded and the majority did say rigid so that's another data point for you let me know what you guys think let me know what else you guys want me to test and if you want to see our latest test rigid versus rigid which included Renegy which is now my
favorite 100 watt panel check out that video right here and we'll walk you through the complete testing so thanks for joining this video and we'll catch you on the next one take care
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