Longi Claims Another Solar Panel Efficiency Record

Solar panel manufacturing goliath Longi has announced what it says is “a new world record” for conversion efficiency in a monocrystalline module. But is it?

The company said it had achieved a 22.38% conversion efficiency, which was verified by independent certification agency TÜV Rheinland. Module conversion efficiency refers to the percentage of energy in sunlight hitting a panel that is converted into electricity.

“This breakthrough once again confirms the development headroom of monocrystalline module technology,” said Longi Solar Vice President Lv Jun. “With continuous R&D investments in technologies and processes, new innovations can be rapidly applied to large-scale production, thus promoting the energy transformation led by solar energy.”

Longi press releases can be light on details at times and this one was one of those. That was about all they had to say – there was no further information on the module involved. This isn’t a scenario confined to Longi as other solar panel manufacturers also tend to be very light on meat and potatoes in news regarding their products (and heavy on the sticky date pudding).

Some further details on what the world record referred to would have been useful given the 400W SunPower Maxeon 3 has a module conversion efficiency of 22.6%.

As for these sorts of advances being rapidly applied to large scale production, that depends on your idea of “rapid”. The following graph provided by Longi shows its progress on monocrystalline solar panel efficiency over the past couple of years.

At the moment, it would appear the Longi solar panel with the highest module efficiency that is commercially available is the Hi-MO X¹, a mono PERC² solar panel featuring a shingled layout that was launched in Australia in August last year. It offers module efficiency of up to 20.3%, an efficiency milestone the company had bypassed in early 2018 according to the graph above.

Longi Doing Well In Australia

Longi was established in 2000 and says it now supplies more than 30GW of solar wafers and modules worldwide each year.  The company arrived on the Australian solar scene in 2017 and so far Longi solar panel reviews from Australian owners have generally been very positive. The company is currently listed on SQ’s trusted solar brands chart at the “more affordable” end of our scale.

Module conversion efficiency is just one aspect to considering when choosing solar panels.