Damage to solar car Solar Team Twente is less serious than expected

According to the team, the damage to the RED E solar car of Solar Team Twente is less than initially thought. It is a small damage that affects one module of the solar panel and only has an effect when the sun is low.

Solar Team Twente writes in a blog that the damage is not too bad. The laminate over the solar panel is damaged, but that only affects one of the modules. According to the team, two percent of the panel is slightly damaged by burns, resulting in a one percent drop in energy revenue when the sun is low.

Earlier this week Solar Team Twente discovered the damage. At the time, it was feared that this would have a greater impact on the efficiency of the solar panels. Now the team says it still has confidence in a top ranking.

The damage is a result of deliberate design risks taken, the team says. To minimize the losses of the solar panel, measures were deliberately omitted that could have prevented the damage.

There is no more time to put a new panel on the car; the World Solar Challenge will start on 13 October. The team unveiled its RED E solar car in June and is competing in the Challenger class, which aims to cover those 3,000 kilometers in the Australian outback as quickly as possible.