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. According to SolarCity, the new panel can produce more electricity per square foot than any other rooftop unit on the market.
Advertisement
Incremental gains in efficiency increase the value of the solar panel, enabling it to produce more electricity over the panel’s lifetime. The company expects to produce 9,000 to 10,000 panels per day once the operations will reach its pick. But jumping from a 100-megawatt test facility to the one-gigawatt factory in Buffalo (these figures refer to the total capacity of the panels that can be produced there) is a big gamble.
“The selection of SolarCity was, in part, already based on the demonstrated superior quality of their product”, said Alain R. Kaloyeros, the president of the SUNY Polytechnic Institute and the governor’s point man on the SolarCity project.
SolarCity (NASDAQ:SCTY) announced that it has been able to produce ~22% efficient modules at its 100 GW Fremont pilot plant.
The improvements that come with the new panel will have a massive impact in the manner in which we utilise solar power minimising our carbon footprint. Traditional solar panels have an efficiency rating of almost 15 percent.
Because the majority of SolarCity users are not paying for equipment or installation, Bass said the new panels aren’t expected to have an impact on the cost to the user.
SolarCity says it new panel is created through a proprietary, low-priced manufacturing process.
Advertisement
When SolarCity bought Silevo, a fledgling California solar panel manufacturer, in June 2014, the company’s solar panels could work at 21 percent efficiency in a laboratory setting. One of the engineers noted that everyone tries to improve efficiency by revamping technology, but there are other ways to achieve that and SolarCity just did so. The primary aim of the company has been to provide solar installation technologies, but in June 2014, SolarCity announced plans to build a 1-gigawatt panel manufacturing facility in Buffalo, New York.
