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SolarCity Says It Has Produced the World's Highest Efficiency Solar Panel
Lucas123 writes: SolarCity, one of the country's leading solar panel makers and installers, today said it has been able to create a product that has a 22.04% efficiency rating, topping its closest competitor SunPower, by about one percent. While the percentages may appear small, SolarCity said the new panels, which will go into pilot production later this month, will produce 30% to 40% more energy with the same footprint as its current panels, and they will cost no more to make.
inquiring minds.....
22.04% is not one percent better than SunPower's 21.5%, it's 2.5% better. Alternatively, it's 0.54 percentage points better. It's not the same thing.
You can't shut us down! The Internet is about the free exchange and sale of other people's ideas!
In my area, the cost of the panels is no longer the primary issue.
I can purchase a 10kw system online including all the panels, cables, inverter, etc. for about $17K.
http://www.wholesalesolar.com/...
That system has 32 panels, the "smart" inverter, racking, disconnect, etc.
The trick is installing it. The lowest total installed price for that system that I've been able to find is $35K. That strikes me as nuts.
I've contacted multiple companies, I've had 2 of them quote me systems after looking at my roof.
Making the panels a bit more efficient won't cut the price by enough to matter until the install cost comes down. Maybe I should start a solar panel install company. :)
The new panels produce 30% to 40% more power over the current models, but they cost the same to manufacture -- about .55 cents per watt, according to Bass. The panels, which are 1.61 meters or 1.81 meters in size, depending on the model, will have a capacity of 355 watts each.
. Curiously they don't claim it would cost the same to the users. May be a little profit taking, nothing wrong with that, they need some motivation and some returns to attract investments. Anyway they have competition, they are not the sole manufacturer of some life saving drug or something. Market will rein in the profits at the optimal level. And may be transportation and installation might be a little more expensive? Don't know, but encouraged the cost of manufacturing is same.
No mention of life of the panels.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If you have to ask, you can't afford them.
With SolarCity you don't buy the system, you just choose to use them as a service provider and pay them per kw/hr for what they generate. They own the panels and all the other hardware, installation, and maintenance. The upside is you aren't responsible for doing anything other than paying your monthly generation bill. There are two major downsides.
It's a 20-year contractual commitment. If you sign up and then sell your house, you're still on the hook. The best case scenario is the new owner could elect to take over the contract. Alternatively, you could pay them to move the system to your new digs. If none of that works, you have to buy out the remainder of the contract.
Also note you're paying them per kw/hr for what's generated, not for what's used. In theory you size the system so that you sell excess generation during the summer to your standard power generation provider, but the fine print is they typically only buy power back at the lowest-tier rate.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Solar City offers you two options - buy the panels outright or lease them. Most people go for the lease option because of the lower upfront cost. I looked at this about a year ago but decided not to get it once I found out that you can't upgrade the panels when newer/cheaper/better ones come along. Whatever you signed up for you are stuck with. No thanks.
It's a good thing SolarCity installs the panels for you when you buy them, then.
Sure, if they would install here, but they won't.
I live in the Dallas, TX area, they do install here, except for areas that are served by cooperatives. Only if you're with Oncore or Texas-New Mexico Power Delivery Companies will they install (due to the rebates and deals they give SolarCity).
With SolarCity you don't buy the system, you just choose to use them as a service provider and pay them per kw/hr for what they generate. They own the panels and all the other hardware, installation, and maintenance. The upside is you aren't responsible for doing anything other than paying your monthly generation bill. There are two major downsides.
The other downside is that they only install where they get special deals from the local power company, I've talked to SolarCity, they won't install here because I'm a member of a cooperative that only provides a $1,000 rebate for installing solar. The other for-profit companies give much higher rebates.
With SolarCity you don't buy the system, you just choose to use them as a service provider and pay them per kw/hr for what they generate. They own the panels and all the other hardware, installation, and maintenance. The upside is you aren't responsible for doing anything other than paying your monthly generation bill. There are two major downsides.
The other downside is that they only install where they get special deals from the local power company, I've talked to SolarCity, they won't install here because I'm a member of a cooperative that only provides a $1,000 rebate for installing solar. The other for-profit companies give much higher rebates.
From both of these responses, I can tell that these supposed do-gooders are actually about the solar equivalent of nursing home medicare fraudsters or ambulance chasers.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
We're deep into diminishing-returns territory on the benefits of population. Cutting back on population growth would let us focus more on the education and support of what kids we do have, netting a greater overall amount of scientific output than we'd get by just breeding like roaches.
It's a shame that the people with access to education and who have the skills and the environment to make a difference are heeding your warning and not breeding, while the people in the world who have no food, no education and no future continue to breed like the cockroaches you mention.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Hint you have to use a certified (by the solar panel manufacture aka the last guys that touched it) to get the fed tax credits.
Like most federal tax credits incentives etc it's pork for a corp interest. All you should need is the signoff from the electrical inspector maybe have them do a quick power output test and sign some paperwork. Instead the value of that work gets marked up the same as the tax breaks.
No sir I dont like it.
Money talks. Mostly it's obscenities and profanity.
Like this? https://www.anapode.com/produc...
Point is, you need a panel. And you need a microinverter. And you need a wire to the roof. And you need a box, called a combiner box, the wire goes into. There is usually a cutoff switch on that box. Then, after that, the wire from the combiner box is usually backfed into your main breaker panel, with the power going backwards through an appropriate breaker rated for the wire's ampacity. Really, the tricky part is the power company has to come and approve the design and install their 2 way meter. Everything else, any idiot can do.
You have one really bad seller's agent if they don't have the solar system lease written into the contract. In reality the worst case scenario is a buyer won't agree and you wait for the next buyer. Given the current market, that won't take long.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
That is why I think $18K to install it is beyond insane...
I just haven't found a reasonable local company...
As for the power itself, $35K works out to about 12 years of my power bills, but even that is too much since a 10kw system will only reduce maybe 40% of my bill.
It is too expensive. At $25K before tax credits, it starts to make sense.
If good panels can be had for less than $17K for the whole kit, of course the cost would come down further.
Maybe other areas have decent competition and suppliers, if the price is lower in other places, I could understand why more people have solar.
But according to the solar association in my city of 250,000, only 150 homes have had solar installed. I've never seen one of them.
No one around here is doing it (well, almost no one)