Solar panel

Aurora Solar, a San Francisco-based SaaS company that develops tools that enable solar professionals to design and sell solar remotely — rather useful in a pandemic, eh? — announced yesterday that it has raised $50 million in Series B, bringing the company’s total investment to more than $70 million. This round, which Aurora says is the largest single investment in this market, was led by ICONIQ Capital.

Grist recently asked the pertinent question: What happens to solar panels when they’re no longer useable?

Many new EV owners (and solar customers) need to upgrade their electrical panel. That panel, which is so critical to your home’s energy, uses antiquated technology. It’s mostly a big dumb circuit breaker. Well, that was until Arch Rao came along to turn that panel into an intelligent, app-controlled energy gateway.

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Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have published a new paper in the journal ACS Photonics that says “anti-solar panels” can generate night solar electricity.

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Every now and again my news feed pushes something weird my way, and I’m always glad when it does. Today’s weird bit of news is a cool new product from a company called Motosola. They have developed a solar charging sun canopy for electric scooters that looks like it can actually put a significant amount of charge back into a vehicle.

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According to the IEA, the spot price for ‘mono crystalline’ solar panels fell from 72¢/W to 45¢/W over 2017. That 27¢/W drop represents a 37.5% fall.

Mono crystalline solar panels offer at least 10% more efficiency than poly crystalline in the same hardware package/size/weight, and today – in key markets – are only 6% more expensive.

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The solar panel industry is fighting physics’ stubborn hold on the secrets of photons exciting electrons – and the results of this atomic level focus are showing up for regular people.

A trio of solar efficiency records have been brought forward recently: Hanergy’s thin film unit developed a 25% solar panel, Trina Solar broke 25% with an IBC solar cell, and a lab in Europe has set an amazing record of a 26% solar cell using a standard, simple ‘p-type’ technology.

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Panasonic has announced their new HIT KURO (black) solar panel. The panel sports a black backsheet and a black frame, plus it hits a 19.4% efficiency, totaling a peak production value of 325W.

The panel seems the same (or very similar) as to what was announced by Tesla and Panasonic back in April of 2017 for the US market.

Panasonic brags that of the 4 million solar panels they’ve sold in Europe – only 148 of them have been returned for warranty issues.

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The Trump administration released its official ruling regarding the Suniva Section 201 case, and stated that they agree that the nation’s solar industry has taken damage as a result of global solar actions.

The administration has chosen to impose a 30% tariff on all imported solar cells and solar panels, decreasing 5% a year for four years. The first 2.5GW of solar cells imported will not be tariffed, to protect the domestic solar panel industry.

The tariffs are far below what Suniva and SolarWorld requested.

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There were approximately 98GW of solar power installed globally in 2017, versus 70GW in 2016. That represents 40% volume growth in a single year! Woo, yeah!

The top 10 module suppliers delivered about 57GW of those volumes – 58% of the total. Even though these groups mostly tilt toward utility-scale work, here we’ll talk about some of their residential solar panels to get you up to speed.

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Solaria’s goal is to deliver a good looking solar panel. They also want their panels to have a high efficiency – at a reasonable price, of course.

The 19.4% monoPERC “PowerXT®-350R-PD” (manufacturer’s specification page) is where we see it happen.

Smartly applied all black shingled solar cells combined with a black frame, keep your curbside appeal up and your kilowatt hour production high.

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JA Solar has had their monocrstyalline (mono) passivated emitter rear cell (PERC) panel certified as the highest efficiency model in the market today. The solar panel’s power output was rated at 326.67W, for a panel level efficiency of 19.97%.

JA Solar’s current monoPERC products for sale max out at approximately 300W.

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Solartech Universal is a South Florida solar panel manufacturer that started with a family discussion in the kitchen in 2012. Sometime in 2018 or 2019, if all goes well, they’re going to launch a ~24% efficient, 480-500W glass on glass bifacial heterojunction solar panel for the commercial and utility-scale solar market.

Solartech Universal started shipping in January of 2016 and currently has 80-85MW of annual manufacturing capacity, plus they’re hiring.

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SunPower’s stock jumped 12% on Monday partially because an analyst is highly impressed with the sales opportunity of the P Series solar panel.

The solar panel raises efficiency partially through the use of a weird $9 trick – shingling solar cells – to maximize direct sunlight on silicon. The new panel could be built in the world’s largest capacity solar panel factory.

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LG is pushing out their upgraded “Neon R” and “Neon AC” solar panels to the residential solar market in the USA. The Neon R peaks at 365W and 21.1% efficiency in a 60 cell format. The Neon AC – with an integrated Enphase Microinverter – peaks at 330W and a 19.3% efficiency.

Both panels are available immediately.

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ZeroMassWater has developed a solar panel kit – “Source” – that uses its electricity to draw water from the atmosphere. The kit delivers up to 5 liters (1.3 gallons) of pure water per day in optimal locations. The unit can be installed and integrated into a regular house.

“Our vision is perfect water for every person, in every place” – Cody Friesen, the founder, CEO and MIT PhD.

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Mega Sunergy released a new “multi shingled array module” 315W solar panel design that increases the efficiency of a standard solar panel by up to 17%. The company has changed how they lay out the 60 individual solar cells within the solar panel. Instead of perfectly spacing those 60 out – with small, defined areas between the cells – the company has allowed the solar cell’s borders to overlap each other while increaseing the cell count to 68.

The company expects their new solar cell layout to increase solar panel output 5-17% depending on the original solar cell type. In effect, by lowering the efficiency of the average solar cell they’ve increased the solar panel efficiency.

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High-tech architecture (aka Structural Expressionism) has begun to embrace solar, and it’s the hottest thing under the sun.  One amazing example: Emirates Insolaire’s new custom colored solar panels – Kromatix, a Swiss technology developed by Swissinso. ”We go vertical, we dress the building with a beautiful energy-producing skin.”

The product debuted back in 2015 at the Water, Energy, Technology, and Environment Exhibition (WETEX 2015) and is finding its way into more installations today.

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One of the most futuristic cool solar systems I’ve ever seen is made by SmartFlower. The analogies are built into the structure – like a flower, the machine rises with the sun, opens wide to catch the rays, tracks the sun across the sky and then closes itself away for the evening.

The SmartFlower is really an interesting-looking piece of engineering. Its purpose shines when you talk about protecting your house if the grid goes down. The price is strong for a standard solar house install – but if the commitment of connecting to your roof is an issue for you, the SmartFlower is cool with you seeing other solar panels.

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The newest solar panel technology was on display at Solar Power International in Las Vegas. The biggest attention getters were higher efficiencies and bifacial – but there are other technologies- cut cells, string ribbons, anti-soiling coatings, and solar tiles – that also deserve some time in the limelight.

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