Solar Nerd articles about: Panel Technology

Solar panel efficiency keeps getting better. Back in 2013 - which really isn’t that long ago - I had 260 watt solar panels installed on my home. Today, most homes will use solar panels in the 300+ watt range. But now, manufacturers are starting to put out panels that exceed 400 watts. These products are at the premium end of the market, which means that you can expect to pay more for them.

If you stick some solar panels on your roof, they’ll generate clean electricity for 25 years or even more. They don’t make noise, generate smoke, or move. All they do is silently turn sunlight into electricity. Seems pretty magical, no? It is a little bit magical, but it’s also good old physics and chemistry. Here’s a quick explanation of how it works. How is a solar cell constructed? The essential component of a solar panel is the solar photovoltaic cell.

In the early days of solar energy - decades ago - people who installed solar panels on their homes tended to be hardcore enthusiasts and hackers who were doing it for environmental reasons above all else. Today, solar technology has gone mainstream. While most people who install solar panels on their houses these days do care about the environment, other concerns such as finances and aesthetics also are a big consideration.

When it comes to buying solar panels for your home, the first thing that manufacturers usually tout is the panel’s efficiency. Solar panel efficiency refers to the amount of sunlight hitting the panel that gets converted into electricity. The intensity of sunlight can be expressed in watts - the same unit used to measure electrical power. For example, if 1,000 watts of sunlight is shining on your solar panel and it generate 200 watts of electricity, the panel is 20% efficient.

If you’ve ever seen a solar panel up close, you might have noticed thin little wires running across each cell. Those little wires do the important job of carrying electrons (electricity) generated by the solar cells into thicker main wires of the panel. You might know from high school science that thin wires have higher resistance, which means they lose more electricity as heat. In a solar panel, that means lower efficiency.

Half-cut solar panels are one of the latest manufacturing innovations to improve solar panel efficiency. A half-cut solar panel is the same size as a standard panel, but the solar cells have been sawn in half then wired together in a way that allows the panel to be more efficient, especially in the shade. This doubles the number of cells and internal connections: a typical solar panel might have 60 cells, while a half-cut panel would have 120 cells.

Are you a meticulous number cruncher who breaks out the spreadsheet whenever you’re planning a big product purchase? I certainly am. The last time I bought a car, and made a spreadsheet with the specifications of all the car models I was considering. I rank-ordered them in each of the categories that were important to me, and made my decision based on which one performed the best. Figuring out which solar panel is best for you is a little like that, although with this article I hope to make is less complicated for you.

If you’ve noticed a neighbor’s roof with solar panels, or just seen pictures of panels, you might notice that they’re very often distinctly blue in color. Why is that? The color of solar panels depends on the type of silicon, the type and thickness of anti-reflective coatings, and the surface texture of the silicon cell. In general, polycrystalline (also known as multicrystalline) solar panels are usually blue, while monocrystalline panels are black.

As a consumer searching for the best solar panels to put on your home, there really isn’t a lot that distinguishes one solar panel from another. If you’re shopping for a car, there’s probably a hundred features, big and small, that make one vehicle different from another. But when it comes to solar panels, it really comes down to a few things: price, warranty, high temperature performance and - probably most notably - efficiency.

When it comes to buying solar panels for your home, there isn’t a lot that obviously differentiates one solar panel from other. If you buy a car, there’s dozens, if not hundreds of different features, styles, and add-on options that you can take into account. But with a solar panel, there’s really only a handful of characteristics that make one product different from another. One of these is the type of material the individual solar cells are made of.