BYD Solar solar panels reviews

BYD is a Chinese manufacturer of tier one solar panels with 12 year product warranties and either 25 or 30 year performance warranties.  The company has an Australian office in Sydney.

BYD Solar Panel Manufacturing Capacity

BYD is a mid sized manufacturer of solar panels and produced approximately 1.5 gigawatts in 2016, well below the world's largest manufacturer, Jinko Solar, which produced around 6.5 gigawatts that year.

The BYD Company

BYD stands for Build Your Dreams and was founded in 1995.  Its headquarters are in Shenzhen, a city of 12 million people immediately north of Hong Kong.  It is a huge company and solar panel manufacture is only a small part of what it does.  Currently it has around 220,000 employees and a market capitalisation of $22 billion. 

BYD is the world's largest producer of rechargeable batteries and also the world's largest manufacturer of electric cars.  In 2016 they sold over 100,000 while Tesla only sold around 76,000.  At the moment I'd definitely take a Tesla electric car over a BYD one, but maybe in the future they'll change my mind on this.

In addition to batteries and electric cars, they also produce electric buses, LED lights, trains, and monorails.

While BYD has been producing solar panels for a number of years they have only recently started to develop a significant presence in Australia.

BYD Sells Battery Storage In Australia

BYD sells B-Box home battery systems in Australia and I wrote about them here.

BYD Solar Panels

Currently, BYD only appears to produce polysilicon panels, which are also known as multisilicon panels.  Polysilicon has the advantage of being slightly cheaper than monosilicon, but it is not as efficient.  As high efficiency is often not required, polysilicon is definitely suitable for use in Australia.

The efficiency of BYD panels ranges as low as 14.1% for some of their smaller, 48 cell panels, up to 16% for their higher efficiency 60 and 72 cell panels.  This is below average for modern panels and makes them less suitable when roof space is limited.

Unfortunately, at the top of their datasheets, BYD gives the cell efficiency and not the panel efficiency.  Because no one ever buys a solar panel and then breaks it up to use the individual cells, giving the cell efficiency rather than the lower panel efficiency is misleading. 

BYD's Double Glass Panel

BYD produces a double glass panel which has solar cells between two layers of glass instead of having a plastic backsheet.  Their datasheet says, "Longer service time up to 40 years" but the warranty is the same.  Their efficiency is similar to their other panels and ranges from 15.1% to 16%.

Corrosion Resistance

The datasheets of standard BYD panels state they have passed the TUV salt corrosion resistance test.  Also, I have viewed corrosion resistance certification for them.  But note their warranty, which you can download from this page, says it doesn't apply to panels installed in a "marine environment".  Unfortunately, they don't state what they consider to be a marine environment. 

My Recommendation

BYD panels are tier one, which means they are considered reliable by large financial organisations when used in large solar projects and so they should be very unlikely to have problems when installed residentially.  While we don't have enough information on BYD panels to recommend them, I would expect them to be reliable.