Hi ExxWhy,
To be fair, the panels I use are more shade tolerant than some others. Quite frankly, I got lucky when I chose the components. I got lucky a second time by choosing to have 33 volts going into the controller.
If there is going to be shade, look for panels with diodes between each cell. However, shade tolerance is about #10 on a list of features.
#1 for me is temperature compensation with a probe on the battery bank. For example, today at -6 c (21 f) the voltage going into the battery bank was 15.3.
ExxWhy wrote:
I've always wondered about solar working at all when it's not in direct sunlight. The vast majority of the time, we like to camp under trees in the shade. For that reason, the portable panels looked attractive to me. I'm still very much in the information gathering phase.