The company will begin making the new product at its 100 MW California facility in October and ramp up production when its Buffalo, New York, 1 GW facility comes online in early 2017. In fact, Solar City’s solar panel manufacturing facility, in Buffalo, New York, has become the largest in North America.
Advertisement
SolarCity is headed by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk. The solar panels you see covering the roofs of an increasing number of homes and businesses capture a few of that energy, at least during the daytime and when there isn’t extensive cloud cover, but, by most standards, they are incredibly inefficient. The panel converts the sun’s energy into electricity much more efficiently than previous models. The panel hit 22.04 percent efficiency according to third-party testing.
The new rooftop solar panel is said to have an efficiency rate of 22.04 percent and produce 30 to 40 percent more power than traditional panels do. The rise of low-cost Asian panels is, after all, one of the main factors that doomed Solyndra, whose tube-shaped solar panels were too pricey to compete.
SunPower’s X-Series panel have an efficiency of 21.5%, so it falls into second place.
Over that time, numerous companies have failed at manufacturing new types of solar panels.
Incremental gains in efficiency increase the value of the solar panel, enabling it to produce more electricity over the panel’s lifetime. SolarCity installed 34 percent of all the US residential solar systems that were put into operation during the first half of this year. They also claim this panel responds to high temperatures better than its competitors’ panels. Nevertheless, the tests of its products at a 100-megawatt pilot plant are important because it’s the technology that will be used in SolarCity’s gigafactory being built in Buffalo. “That could be a key differentiator in hot climates”.
Advertisement
The company says it expects to install their record-setting solar panels in the same common areas, including rooftops, carports, schools, and business, as well as in large-scale, ground level installations and utility-scale solar fields.
