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Haven't noticed anything yet regarding the scratching, but will keep an eye out. Nothing compared to the 1+ liter of water that the plexiglas and silicone let in though! Whomever has ever claimed solar cells are fragile was full of it. I had those things baking in the sun and underwater for almost 2 weeks, cracked several in half due to driving to the store to buy the new sheet of lexan while they were uncovered and flapping around (found out neither my wife's car nor my mustang would hold a large enough piece AFTER I took the plexi piece off!!) and they still work pretty well. Not as well as they did, but took a pretty awful beating and I'm still at 85+% of their original performance.
I do have it connected to the car now; I have schotky diodes inline with the panels and have them connected via a cigarette lighter plug.
Still haven't worked out the alternatorless stuff for gains, but did have some nice benefit - I noticed yesterday that I left my power on to my wipers/blower motor for 2-3 days. Usually this would drain the battery pretty badly, and I'm sure the continuous (in daytime) 14.5V from the panels helped save my $160 battery.
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