CEC are concerned with the reliability of solar panels entering Australia, and are taking steps to address it.
On Thursday I attended the All Energy Conference and saw a presentation by Sandy Pulsford of the Clean Energy Council on solar panel quality. The gloomy skies above Melbourne that day well matched the bad news he gave about the quality of some solar panels in Australia. [Read more…]
Door to door solar salespeople are common in Australia. Here’s what you need to know if you are approached.
If you own an unshaded roof in Australia, filling your roof with solar is probably the best investment you can make. That sounds like a smarmy sales pitch, but the numbers are there for everyone to see.
Yet over 75% of Australian roofs still don’t have panels.
So how can the solar industry get the message out to non-solar homeowners that they really need to at least run the numbers on getting panels installed?
If you are thinking of buying an electric car and have solar then you need to read this.
I recently wrote about how an electric car revolution is coming thanks to declining battery costs and rising environmental concern. I made a promise in that article I would soon write about charging electric cars with rooftop solar and soon is now. Or at least it soon will be. [Read more…]
UPDATE 27th August 2018: It has kindly been brought to my attention the warranty for SunPower’s P17 panels excludes normal residential installation. The SunPower P17 warranty says it does not apply to:
“PV Modules which have been installed on single-family homes or semi‐detached homes, including but not limited to duplexes and townhomes. For clarity, apartment and condominiums are not excluded.”
UPDATE 31st August 2018: P18 and P19 panels will be covered by SunPower’s warranty when installed on residential homes. Warranties for P-series panels can be downloaded from SunPower’s Australian site on this page.
SunPower Performance Series solar panel, or P-Series for short, are now available in Australia. These attractive panels aren’t available in a wide range of colours and are a lower efficiency but cheaper alternative to SunPower’s E-Series and X-Series panels. While sold overseas for more than a year, they’ve only been available Down Under for a few months and they’ve been on the down low, as their arrival was devoid of fanfare. [Read more…]
We are getting reports of people paying through the nose for 5kW of “UV Solar Panels” from fast talking salespeople. Paying more for “UV Panels” is about as sensible as buying rainbow powered panels from a leprechaun.
The sun is a very large, naturally occurring, fusion reactor in the sky.
It constantly releases a vast amount of energy. Even by the standards of sky fusion reactors it’s pretty powerful and outshines at least 90% of the stars out there. [Read more…]
Now you know what the those DNV-GL engineers *really* get up to in their secret European HQ…
DNV-GL’s PV Module Reliability Scorecard Report for 2017 is out1 and gives some fascinating results. You can follow that long link in the previous sentence to download your own copy of the report, but for your benefit, I’ve included my own unique analysis below, where I will give my interpretation of the results in 2,000 words or less.
Or possibly more. I’ve only just started writing so don’t really know just how many words I’ll require, but if it looks like I’ll go over my self-imposed limit I can just leaveoutsomespaces, so it’s not really a problem. [Read more…]
34 years after it was invented ‘PERC’ is now a big deal in solar panel technology. But what the hell is it?
Update 16th April 2019: Many PERC panels have suffered from LeTID deterioration problems since this article was written. This article here goes into the problem and this article on the MC Electrical blog covers it in detail and gives information on which PERC panels are resistant to LeTID.
Solar panel manufacturers crave efficiency. I’m not talking about the labour efficiencies they receive from building new production lines that are robot-heavy and people-light, although they like those too. [Read more…]
The ‘Tesla New Energy’ website yesterday.
Many people are aware Tesla is planning to produce solar tiles, but not so many know the company is also has plans to sell conventional solar panels. According to one report, Tesla is going to follow the novel approach of producing them inside a buffalo in New York. Production is scheduled to begin within two months and the panels will only be available from Tesla.
The panels are not featured on Tesla’s Australian site and I currently have no information on when or if they will be available here. But if you do enough searching on the internet or, more likely, receive some spam from them as I did, you may think you can order some of these panels from the Tesla New Energy factory in China. [Read more…]
Do you know the difference between a P-Type and N-Type solar cell, duuuuuude?
When it comes to material for making solar cells, silicon is the most bodacious of all the elements. Its market share is an excellent circa 97%1. If you want solar PV, there is next to no choice other than silicon. However, there is more than one type of silicon cell, which is fortunate for people who enjoy faffing about when deciding what to buy. [Read more…]
China’s Solar Top Runner Program – What The Hell Is It?
China is the world leader when it comes to manufacturing and installing solar panels. [Read more…]
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