Musk unveils worlds most efficient solar panel | Alternative Energy | Forums

will be interesting to see what the price of them are

Experts say the average solar cell panel can convert 14-to-20% of the energy it collects into usable electricity. By photosynthesis standards — a plant is 5% efficient — that's not bad, but humans believe solar panels should do better.

On Friday in New York City's Times Square, SolarCity, the nation’s largest installer of residential solar panels, and company chairman Elon Musk introduced what they claim is the world’s most efficient rooftop solar panel, achieving a peak efficiency of 22.04%.

SolarCity said the rating was verified by the Renewable Energy Test Center, a third-party certification testing provider for photovoltaic and renewable energy based in Fremont, California.

The panels are the same size as traditional panels, but, according to SolarCity, produce 30-to-40% more power. They also claim that the panels perform better than competing products in high temperatures.

Peter Rive, SolarCity's co-founder and CTO, told Mashable in an interview that the new panels are sufficiently cheap to produce that they will allow the company to continue to make money off of them even if government policies to provide tax breaks for panel installation expire.

“That’s been the singular focus of the company… to continue to get the costs down,” Rive said.

“I’m really excited about this… it’s the best solar panel on the planet and it empowers us from 2017 and beyond to control our own destiny,” he said.

SolarCity’s efficiency leap, however, may not be that big when compared to the current state of the art.

Solar energy expert John Farrell, who serves as Director of the Democratic Energy Program for The Institute for Local Self-Reliance told Mashable that typical solar panel efficiency is, at 18%-to-22%, actually in the same range as SolarCity’s new panel.

“In the lab they get to 40%,” said Farrell, but that’s with special materials that would likely jack up the cost of solar panels by 50%. Out in the field, companies like SolarCity must balance efficiency with cost.

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