Re: flexible solar panel verses regular solar cells
The ones on eBay are 18 feet long, and has been said before, they can't be cut, shaped or molded to fit bumps or ridges on a vehicle roof. Some of the ones I've seen have adhesive on the back and some don't. Some have velcro and some are 9 or 12 feet long. They all need flat, unobstructed space on a roof. The "stealth" installation shown on YouTube has some pretty obvious wiring that would get someone's attention, even before they looked on the roof.
The flexible ones have some other disadvantages. If you glue them on to the roof, they can't be easily replaced if something goes wrong. If you glue them to a piece of wood in order to mount them, then there's no advantage to a flexible panel. If you just roll them out when you need them, you'll need a very long space that's not shaded by trees or vehicles for it to work. That means that it probably can't be laid out on the ground. Anyway, if you laid it on the ground, Murphy's law says that someone would step on it and a small rock under the panel would poke through the panel's surface. Since they have wiring inside the panel, a small hole could make the entire thing useless. If you found a surface above the ground, a thin, lightweight long object would probably get blown away by a small breeze. Glued flexible ones also can't be easily replaced when newer, higher power and lower cost panels come out like they do each year (solar technology moves as fast as computer technology).
I figured that the ones with Velcro might be a little better if you removed the panel when you're not using it. The only problem with Velcro on a roof is that it would quickly get dirty and dirty Velcro doesn't hold that well to itself.
Once I figured all that out, I had to face the fact that the amount of vehicle roof space I had was fixed unless I won the lottery. The amount of space that didn't have obstructions like vents, bumps or other things reduced that available space. With those restrictions, I did some math and compared a bunch of solar panels by watts per square foot. All of the flexible, foldable or rollable panels that I found came out at the bottom. The standard flat ones did much, much better.
If you're worried about theft, get mounts that keep the panels low to the roof and get a professional to hide the wiring properly. Also, Google "security bolts." They won't stop a determined thief with lots of time but they will slow someone down long enough to make them obvious or to have them change their mind.
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