Solaria solar panels reviews

Solaria solar panels are new on the Australian scene, but have been available for home installations in the USA for some time. The now California-headquartered company was founded back in 2000 in New Mexico and built its first solar panel production line for utility scale PV applications in 2006. Solaria commenced development of solar panels for home and commercial markets in 2014.

The company says it holds or has pending 250 patents relating to materials, processes, applications, products, manufacturing automation and equipment.

Solaria PowerXT

Solaria's flagship products are the PowerXT "Pure Black" range of solar panels that were introduced to the U.S. residential market in 2016 and are now available in Australia. As the name suggests, these are an all-black panel. The PowerXT boasts a conversion efficiency of up to 20.2% and a product warranty of 25 years. The company says among the XT's standout features are patented cell cutting and advanced interconnect process that reduces inactive space between cells, while also eliminating common points of failure.

Solaria has manufacturing facilities in the USA and South Korea - and the latter is where the PowerXT panels for the Australian market are produced. There's also an "AC" version of the PowerXT that has an Enphase microinverter embedded on the back of the module. While that model isn't available in Australia as yet, Solaria informs us it will likely be in the second half of 2020.

Solaria has been ramping up its production capacity, helped along by an injection of USD $40 million in growth funding from investors announced in September 2019. It said this funding would enable it to more than double production capabilities by the end of last year.

The company considers its modules to be "premium panels", so they likely aren't particularly cheap. As Solaria solar panels are very new to Australia, we're still gathering information on the company and its products - so, expect to see more detail soon.