How effecient are consumer solar panels today?

[Inkz]

One of the Tech News topics got me curious about this. I know about 9 years ago I heard things about the  improving percentage of efficiency. Also for home installations do you need to have a large house battery to store it? Are there good, affordable options now? Thank you guys, I have little experience in this field.

[Moress]

The size of your system will change based on where you live and obviously how much power you use. For my area (Michigan) an average household using 1000kwh per month (nat. average is ~900) will need a system capable of providing something like 15kwh per day. A system like this costs ~45-50k USD before the tax breaks you get for them. Yes you need a wall mounted battery system that is scaled for your system as well. 

Edit: This is for a 100% grid independent system and its very possible to get a smaller one to just supplement your usage

[Skanky Sylveon]

I purchased this about a month ago, each panel produces about 25 watts.

About a year or two before that, there was a kit that had panels that produced about 15 watts.

The efficiency is still going up at a decent rate.

[NeoAthlon]

Depending on where you live, any who your energy provider is, you may have the option to just sell all of the power you produce directly to the power company offsetting your bill, and removing the need for a battery.

 

Solar is getting more efficient, but the big jumps lately are in energy storage, price per kwh of storage is dropping, specifically with lithium batteries. There are a few new batteries on the horizon, and with more and more plug in electric vehicles on the road, re-purposed ev batteries are getting easier and cheaper to come by, making great energy storage for your home.

 

I've actually been looking into this recently, depending on how much power you use, and if you plan to design/install the system yourself the panels will recover their cost in 3-5 years, and generally have a guaranteed power output rating for 25 years.

 

Cost for panels in terms of $/watt is around $0.8 - $1.0/watt for ready to use 100 watt panels. Mono crystalline panels are slightly more than poly crystalline, but it's a newer tech, the panels are lighter and slightly flexible giving them better durability.

 

Looks like were both in michigan, the hours of peak energy producing sun range from 4hrs/day in the winter to around 6hrs/day in the summer. If your looking for enough energy production to go off grid, you can take your average daily power usage, and divide by an average of 5hrs/day of energy production to figure out what you'll need in panels to produce the energy you need.

 

There is also cost of charge controllers,  inverters(converting dc power either from batteries or directly from panels into ac power for your home), wiring, and batteries. All of these will vary depending on the size of the system your trying to setup.

[Inkz]

47 minutes ago, Moress said:

The size of your system will change based on where you live and obviously how much power you use. For my area (Michigan) an average household using 1000kwh per month (nat. average is ~900) will need a system capable of providing something like 15kwh per day. A system like this costs ~45-50k USD before the tax breaks you get for them. Yes you need a wall mounted battery system that is scaled for your system as well. 

Edit: This is for a 100% grid independent system and its very possible to get a smaller one to just supplement your usage

As it says under my name I am from Michigan, like you. I am not looking to go completely off the grid, I don't even own my own house yet. I am just looking to see where we are and maybe do some in a couple years. Off topic it is cool to see people from Michigan responding to a person from Michigan. Just in case you guys don't know we actually have a thread about Michigan somewhere.

10 minutes ago, NeoAthlon said:

Depending on where you live, any who your energy provider is, you may have the option to just sell all of the power you produce directly to the power company offsetting your bill, and removing the need for a battery.

 

Solar is getting more efficient, but the big jumps lately are in energy storage, price per kwh of storage is dropping, specifically with lithium batteries. There are a few new batteries on the horizon, and with more and more plug in electric vehicles on the road, re-purposed ev batteries are getting easier and cheaper to come by, making great energy storage for your home.

 

I've actually been looking into this recently, depending on how much power you use, and if you plan to design/install the system yourself the panels will recover their cost in 3-5 years, and generally have a guaranteed power output rating for 25 years.

 

Cost for panels in terms of $/watt is around $0.8 - $1.0/watt for ready to use 100 watt panels. Mono crystalline panels are slightly more than poly crystalline, but it's a newer tech, the panels are lighter and slightly flexible giving them better durability.

 

Looks like were both in michigan, the hours of peak energy producing sun range from 4hrs/day in the winter to around 6hrs/day in the summer. If your looking for enough energy production to go off grid, you can take your average daily power usage, and divide by an average of 5hrs/day of energy production to figure out what you'll need in panels to produce the energy you need.

 

There is also cost of charge controllers,  inverters(converting dc power either from batteries or directly from panels into ac power for your home), wiring, and batteries. All of these will vary depending on the size of the system your trying to setup.

Where I live I think we have Consumers. I am not planning to do this immediately, but maybe in a few years. I am not sure if Consumers has a buy back plan. Off topic it is cool to see people from Michigan responding to a person from Michigan. Just in case you guys don't know we actually have a thread about Michigan somewhere.

[Pixel5]

On 15.9.2017 at 12:28 AM, Moress said:

For my area (Michigan) an average household using 1000kwh per month (nat. average is ~900)

holy fuck thats a massive energy usage, i use about 3000-3500 kWh, per year.

[Moress]

4 hours ago, Pixel5 said:

holy fuck thats a massive energy usage, i use about 3000-3500 kWh, per year.

Oh yeah, last I checked I used about 250kwh a month, thats with AC and 2 gaming pcs

[vanished]

I think they're around 20%,with the latest lab-only prototypes coming up into the 40s

[DragonTamer1]

It depends on what manufacturing process they used and if it is a reliable company. There are a lot of chinese knock offs that advertise 21% efficiency but can only muster about 10%.

 

The kind of tax breaks you get will depend on state, ironically with Navada and Arazona being among the worst for solar despite all the sun (burocrats).

 

Edit: if you get an estimate and they try to convince you with the cost of SRECs, ignore them and get another quote. SRECs fluctuate in value and they tend to use a value from when they are most valuable.

[mariushm]

They've reached around 24% efficiency, but readily available for consumers are at around 20%

 

For example, you can buy these IXYS monocrystalline cells which reach 22% efficiency, but they're expensive (~ 40$ per watt in 1pcs) : https://www.digikey.com/products/en?dc=13159

Less efficient ones are cheaper, for example 12$ gets you 3 watts (5.5v @ 540mA) with around 16% efficiency : https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/seeed-technology-co-ltd/313070001/1597-1414-ND/5488054

 

They work best indoors and outdoors and convert a larger spectrum of light and don't degrade as easily as polycristalline

 

The cheaper polycrystalinne cells which are good for outdoors usually hover at around 10-13% efficiency and they also degrade more over time.

 

And then there's amorphous solar cells (the crap you find in solar calculators) which work on a narrow spectrum of light and typically have only up to around 5% efficiency .. ex $40 get you a  200 mm by 900mm mat that produces up to 5w (5.3v at 950mA )

[Boomwebsearch]

As solar technology has evolved and continuously is as of the moment they are getting more and more efficient in general. Although commercial solar plants are more efficient than consumer ones. Although the consumer ones are pretty good for most usage cases (powering some portable electronics). Since the commercial ones are much more expensive I would pick a consumer solar panel that meets your need/s (supplies enough power, and other features that you may like) and select it. The efficiency will not be 100 percent as the process of convective the sun's resources to energy is not completely effective and efficient (some energy is lost in the process).

[vanished]

5 hours ago, mariushm said:

[...]They work best indoors and outdoors [...]

 what!?  That covers 100% of situations, so I don't understand the value of saying this  

[mariushm]

1 hour ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

 what!?  That covers 100% of situations, so I don't understand the value of saying this  

it means they'll produce reasonable amounts of energy even when you try to use them let's say under some incandescent or halogen light inside your room  (for example for applications like solar powered calculators, fm radios etc)

 

Polycrystalline solar cells are working best with actual sunlight, remove the natural light and their output drops significantly.

[vanished]

1 minute ago, mariushm said:

it means they'll produce reasonable amounts of energy even when you try to use them let's say under some incandescent or halogen light inside your room  (for example for applications like solar powered calculators, fm radios etc)

 

Polycrystalline solar cells are working best with actual sunlight, remove the natural light and their output drops significantly.

ah, that makes sense I guess