Aptos DNA bifacial panel & Trina vertex S bifacial panel

Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back to the channel. On today episode, I want to talk to you about some of my favorite or my go-to solar panels. Okay, so uh first off, the first one here is an Aptas DNA bfacial 370 W model right here.

And then this one right here is the Trina Vertex 385 watt bacial panel. So both of them are bfacial. Both of them are close to the same size. The Trina Vertex is maybe about two two and a quarter maybe uh uh wider and just a hair taller, but they're pretty much, you know, in the same class, right?

Like I said, they're both by facial. They're both right around 37 385 watts. Uh but the Trina, like I said, is maybe about 15 watts, you know, more, but it is also a little bit larger. Okay, but the point is if you look at them, they're very similar in how they perform, at least on paper, which so we're going to find out if they really perform very well together.

But also, they're some of my favorite mainly because the cost toerformance ratio. Okay, so what does that mean? This panel, I think right now is on sale or whatnot at uh Signature Solar, which where we got it from, about $104ish per panel, I think. Um, and that comes out to roughly around uh 28 cents per a watt or something like that.

So, like I said, that one's really good. The Vertex I think I got from uh Bean Brothers and it was I want to say closer to about$140. So, it's about $36 more expensive. So, it is a little bit bigger.

Um, and then I did not get the offer. I think it was for like free shipping and stuff like that. So, it's just a little bit more. But since I have, you know, many of those thought we go ahead and check these two out today.

mainly because if you're looking at them, you may, you know, probably be looking between these two, right? Uh there is the other models for the app toss panels, right? They have the 370, they have the 400, I believe, and also the 440. Uh the 400 is a little bit larger than the 370, obviously, right?

That one may or may not be closer to the Vertex 385. But today's episode, we're going to be comparing these two. So, let's get to it. So, here's the two panels.

This right here is the Aptas DNA panel, and this right here is a Trina Vertex panel. Uh, we're looking at the backside right now. You'll probably see the front side when we, you know, do the test or whatnot, but we thought we look at the back side, cuz the back side is a little bit interesting. Okay, so on the ATOSS panel, it'll look like the cells are spaced further apart, right?

because you can see that this black line here is a little bit thicker. But on the back side of the Trina panel, they'll look very close together. And I'll tell you right now, that is not the case. When you look at them from the front, the cells are spaced pretty much, you know, the same width apart.

Okay? But for some reason, on the back side of the Aptos panels, they have like a like some type of insulation or secure securement layer that's on the backside that makes it look like that. Uh but on the Trina, it doesn't have that. Okay.

So, the interesting thing about that is that the ATOSS panel I think boasts a higher bfacial gain with the backside exposed than the Trina even though there seems to be less surface area of the cell exposed. Right? So, that's something I wanted to point out. Um, it'll look like it has, you know, obviously if you do the mathematical math and figure all this out, there will obviously be, you know, less exposed here uh than this, right?

So, that's something interesting to point out. Other than that, there's really no frills or throws going on on the back side of these panels. Both of them have the same type of build quality. As you can see, they're almost the same height, but technically, uh, one is just a little bit, uh, taller than the other.

It just looks that they're same height, mainly because, you know, it's just leans backwards. But the other thing to point out, cuz it's something I thought about, is that the lip on here are are about uh not big enough to mount uh optimizers on the top lip. Okay? So, if you're going to mount optimizers on these panels, you'll probably have to mount them on the side unless you somehow place the panels on the, you know, landscape mode cuz the lip on here is maybe about let's say maybe 38 of an inch and here you got maybe an eighth of an inch lip here, right?

So, that's about as far as that goes. So, optimizer wise, you have to mount them there. Other than that, you know, the panels are very close to the same. The Trina has maybe one MC4 connector that is just a pain to get off.

The first panel we're going to be looking at here is a a Trina vertex panel. And this is a Bfacial 385 watt panel. And Trina warranties this product for about 25 years. And somewhere on here they say somewhere around uh it has the lowest degradation of any panel.

Uh so they're warrantying somewhere around like 2% uh degradation for this panel in the first year. If you can somehow prove that and get warrantied all that stuff, great. Good for you, right? Uh the most important thing is that all of these panels are, you know, definitely sold in the US and in order to do that, you're going to need to meet all these certifications, right?

So all the panels we're going to be talking about are certified, you know, and UL listed and all of that good stuff here. So uh talking quickly about this panel, it's a 385 watt panel. It has a maximum open circuit voltage of around 40.6 and a short circuit voltage of around 12.07. Okay.

And as you mentioned earlier, uh they're uh you know warrantying this thing for about 2% uh degradation on the first year, but the whole panel has a 25year warranty. Okay, this panel weighs a whopping 46.3 lb and has pretty much all the documentation you would need to try to figure out if you're going to mount it, how much power it produces, all of that good stuff. Okay. The one thing that I didn't see on uh this data sheet was mainly around how much uh bfacial gain is achieved uh by it being bfacial.

But what they say is that it produces somewhere around maximum of up to 405 watts. Okay. So I purchased this panel uh from this company called Bean Brothers and and just a quick shout out to them mainly because I had a good experience with them. But I will say I've had no uh relationship or sponsorship or anything like that in any way with this company.

Um I just kind of came across this company. I think it was on some type of post. Somebody referred to it and then you know I've placed a few orders with this company but like I said not affiliated in any way and they did not give me any discount or anything like that for this video. They didn't even know we were making videos.

Okay. So the point is uh I ordered these panels from Bean Brothers. I we ordered a lot of these panels, so we got some kind of bulk pricing. I'm pretty sure I did not pay anywhere near 175 bucks.

Uh it I do think it was much less than that, but we like I said, we did order a lot of these panels. So, uh just a quick uh quick uh note about Bean Brothers. Um I do believe they're based out of Texas. Um at least all the times that we've dealt with them, they seem to be in Texas.

Um and we've had a lot of good experience with this company. Like I said, I'm not trying to just point this out, but usually uh I do want to point out when you have good experiences or bad experiences. But the main reason I'm pointing out good experiences that um if people are questioning if you can use this company to get quality service and good panels and you know they stand behind you know their their sale, then that's something that I can definitely assure you that I've personally experienced. Okay.

So, uh on one of the shipments we had two broken panels. Um I sent them an email, pictures, all that stuff. They were quickly to respond and they offered a few options how to proceed, you know, replacement refund, but all this stuff. What I personally decided to do was just get a refund on the two panels mainly because, you know, shipping it back, dealing with all that stuff, and them shipping two panels just seemed like ridiculous, especially with the freight cost and all that stuff you'd have to get, which means I'd have to buy another, you know, huge uh order to get those other panels.

It would just be stupid, right? So the point is um they give you a few options and are able to work with you. But like I said um this these panels I think I paid maybe somewhere close to aboutundred and I want to say around $40ish dollars maybe I want to say. Um but like I said we did buy bulk panels.

So that's something that you could ask them for quotes like bulk pricing. So that's something I would definitely do. Okay. The second uh panel we're looking at is this apttos panel.

And this is the DNA 120 by facial uh panel. The model we have today is a 30 70 uh watt panel and according to the marketing they say produce up to 30% uh more energy with this bfacial panel right uh this apttos panel is warranty for 30 years versus the 25 years um on the trina panels and they have a different performance and linear performance uh warranty and all of this stuff pointed out but like I said this panel is also certified with the certification required to be able to sell this in the US. Okay, so going over quickly, uh this panel 375 [clears throat] watt panel has efficiency of about 20.28. Uh most of the solar modules these days are going to have about that uh range.

No super groundbreaking uh discovery has been made where you know they just magically become 50 80 90%. That's just crazy right now. Unheard of. I'm sure some people are working on it, but we haven't seen it in the market yet.

40.4 opencircuit voltage and short circuit voltage have run 11.26. Um, and this obviously has a maximum system voltage of around 1,500 per string. Okay. Uh, the trainer one also has a high I think it may have been um 11 or 1500.

Uh, but I'm usually not pointing these out because most of the people building these I would say small to medium size arrays are using these all-in-one type of inverters. And those inverters usually only go up to maybe 450, maybe 500 on some of them. Um, so you know, you're obviously not going to max out the string on using those items or using those controllers. Okay.

So, uh, the other thing I want to point out here is that this panel weighs 42.3 lbs, which is a little bit lighter, and they have a bfacial gain output, right? So, the 375 watt panel with, you know, 10% bifacial gain is about 407 watts. But if you get the 15% because you mount it properly and in like, you know, perfect conditions, you can get up to about 425 watts. Okay.

So, I personally bought these panels from a company called Signature Solar. Um, I've placed a lot of orders with them and we've ordered parts, uh, components, uh, inverse, everything from this, uh, company. Um, I I do want to say that, you know, I've personally had good experience with them. I know that some people may or may not have.

Uh, the shipping, you know, is usually pretty quick. Um, and then I will say, uh, I'll throw some links up and they will be affiliate links into their affiliate marketing program, but they did not give me these products or anything like that for free. It's, you know, uh, a link that just referred you to their website to buy something, right? That may be something that helps out.

But the point is, um, that I personally bought all of these panels with the my own monies and this, uh, 375 watt panel is no longer listed on their website. I'm not sure what the deal with that is. Um I I don't know if they've been discontinued or maybe there's there's too high in demand. So they're just not listing it anymore because they don't want people ordering stuff they don't have.

Who knows, right? So uh the point is that I personally order a lot from uh this company. U haven't had any issues with them. Um and I will go ahead and say uh if you do uh this comes up again, maybe we'll throw a note up that I bought these panels for I want to say close to about 104 bucks.

Uh, so that comes out to roughly around 28 cents per watt. $104 per panel is a lot less than maybe about 140 here because that's roughly about let's just say 36 to 40 bucks, right? Lesser than uh the Trina panels, but I also did buy a lot and I bought enough in that order to get free shipping. Okay.

Uh so I believe like free shipping uh at the time I bought it they had a promotion you had to buy something I think it was like over $2,000 something like that to give you free shipping. So, if you think about the cost, uh, ordering from Signature Solar seemed to be a better deal for me if you can get the free shipping uh, tied in, right? So, sometimes you may find um, uh, products and things you can buy at other retailers or authorized retailers um, that may seem better, but once you factor in the shipping cost, it doesn't actually get that great, right? So, something to think about.

Anyways, point is uh if it comes back up here, we'll throw it out. But like I said, it's roughly about 104 bucks per panel. And that I believe is probably the single best uh pricing for a B facial, you know, uh name branded solar panel that you could really get that seems to have a proven track record. Okay, so when I say proven track record, this company seems to have been out for a while.

I don't have a lot of Apptos items and this is my first AppToss panel, but if you look around, a lot of people have these panels. Okay, so like I said, do these panels, you know, work the same? Are they about the same in performance? Are they worth it?

We're going to hook uh one of these panels, each of these panels to uh each uh Delta Twos, EcoFlow Delta 2s, and we're going to see, you know, are we going to get the same uh uh performance or same uh uh solar energy generation out of them, right? All right, you guys. So, we got two solar panels set up here. This one right here is a Trina Vertex, and this one right here is the Atas.

Uh they're both set up at the best position I could get them to and about pretty much as normalized I could get them to. As you can see, they're both fully illuminated and they're pretty much set to exactly the same angle. Okay, one is just a hair bigger than the other one, so you can't get it 100% the same, but the angle are set to be exact the same. And they're both by facial panels, you know, so they're both getting the same amount roughly from a back lighting.

So, let's go check the performance on these because they're both linked to two independent delta 2s right now. Okay. And they started at the same state of charge when I started filming this video. And these things fill up pretty quick, right?

So, this one right here on the right is linked to the uh Trina right here, right behind it. And then this one right here is linked to the Aptos, right? Let's go take a look. This Apttos one right now is saying it's bringing in roughly about 247, 232, uh 227.

It's been ranging anywhere up to maybe about just a hair over 300. This one right here is also ranging up to about 350. I think I saw earlier Max. Right.

So, as you can see right now, if I can get rid of this glare. All right. You can kind of see that right now it's at 287 290 something. So, you can see it just fluctuates a little bit.

Bring the screen back. Right now, it's about 250, 258, 267. But this one is right around 226, 233, 242, 295, 303. You can kind of see right there.

If we can get rid of the glare as much as possible, you'll see 292, 293, 285. This one right here is about 254. Like I said, they both started close to the same state of charge, but this one is definitely charging up just a hair faster. And it does seem to be pulling just a few extra watts, even though they're close to the same.

But like I said, they're pretty much exactly the same. As you can see right here, 299, 300, 297, 300 right there. Look at that. They're pretty much almost exactly the same type of panel.

Uh they seem to be performing the same. I don't can't say for shaded performance, but in terms of full lit performance, 311, 298, 298, 298, right? This one is about 314, 310, still 297, right? So, uh they're going to be pretty much the same.

They're both hooked up directly without any optimizers or anything like that. Just a direct connection using the EcoFlow cables. So, right now you can see they're pretty much close to being exactly the same. All right.

So, what do I think about these panels? Okay. So, the panels are obviously very similar. They've performed very much the same.

One may argue since the one plugged into the Trina uh charged up a little bit faster and then you know some parts of the timeline look like it had a higher uh performance, right? Some may argue the Trina is just a little bit better, but in my argument they're pretty much in the same class and you're talking about, you know, very close to the same panel. Okay. uh I think we missed it on the documentation or stage earlier but both of these panels are uh maximum system voltage or you know maximum voltage for a single series string is about 1,500 volts.

So that's a lot of panels in series. Okay. Uh the other thing to point out is that both of these panels are actually made in Vietnam. One of them I think the Trina one says assembled in Vietnam whereas the Aptas one says made in Vietnam.

So uh the point is they're both from Vietnam. Okay. So, the uh other than that, there's not too much of a real difference. Okay.

But like I said, which one would I go out and buy again? Right now, I would say if I could buy the Aptas 370, I would definitely go out and buy those again because they are for me at least uh you know, on the sale that I was able to uh and the bulk pricing I was able to get seems to be just a little bit cheaper, right? So, maybe about 34 36 bucks cheaper. Uh but for some reason, Signature Solar doesn't have them for sale anymore.

And we're going to have to contact them and see, you know, what's the deal with that. Hopefully, they keep selling those because I feel like they're very popular panel, especially coming in at like uh 28 cents a watt, something like that seems to be probably the very uh good performer for its size, weight, and you know, where are you going to get them from? So, uh but if you can get the trainer Vertex one for a lower price, you should obviously get that, right? So, what which one would I buy?

I would just buy whichever one is the best deal for me in the ones I could get, right? Because not all of them are always going to be in stock, especially right now because the demand for solar panels seems to be high. Why are they so high? You know, I'm not exactly sure.

We can speculate and I can speculate. Maybe the tariffs are going to go up so people are buying them. Or maybe people are trying to become more energy independent so people are buying them. Or maybe because we're in summer and everybody's so hot, they're trying to find a way to reduce their energy bills, right?

Who in the world knows? Okay, maybe it's some combination of all that combined, right? But as I mentioned earlier, I did buy both of these or all the panels that we have with their own monies. Uh, and I wouldn't hesitate on buying either one of these panels again.

But I would probably lean towards mainly the apttos mainly because you know the price per watt performance, right? Each one of these panels can charge up like portable power stations really fast and we have installed them at other people's locations, right? So that's something I think about. I'll stop jibber jabbering.

Anyways, hope this video helped you guys out. If you have any questions, let them know. Otherwise, have a great day and we'll see you guys next time.