Thin Film Solar Panels
The latest innovation in the solar panel industry is the newest thin film solar panels.
What makes these panels so different to their older cousins is the fact that they use a very thin layer of semiconductor layer allowing them to reap to very important benefits:
- Low cost per watt manufacturing. Several companies are advertising a $1 per watt solution to solar power creation.
- Efficiency of the panels have increased to almost 20 percent.
How Do Thin Film Solar Panels Affect You?
Well, unfortunately, this new technology may be just out of reach for a few more years. Right now, this technology is primarily reserved for the larger purchasers, such as power electric companies.Although, I’ve seen some rumblings of residential installations. But these companies are very localized to specific geographic regions.
It’s definitely going to flip the electrical companies on their heads when you see this form of initial distribution. This will allow for the electricity companies to get a chance to start generating cheaper power from the sun, so they will be in a position to be competitive when this new technology becomes mainstream.
Let’s take a critical look at the two advantages mentioned earlier.
First off, the low cost per watt is easy to see the benefits. I did some quick and dirty calculations at $1 per watt to install a 100Amp service into my house. The overall cost was about $12,000.
Still pretty steep you say? If I take my current hydro bill at about $200 per month, (that for me is a good month), my payback period is exactly 60 months or 5 years!
…after 5 years I enjoy practically free electricity
for the next 15 years!
So, I continue to pay the same amount per month as I do with my electrical company, and after 5 years I enjoy practically free electricity for the next 15 years!
The only ongoing expenses are component replacements with will definitely not add up to the current non-recoverable costs I’m dealing with now.
The lower cost comes from the fact that the layer of semiconductor that is used per panel is greatly reduced.
This thinner layer also has proven to offer the second benefit. Higher efficiency.
The 4 to 5% gain in efficiency of this new process is a definite bonus that helps to reduce costs as it takes less panels to create the same amount of power.
Now, the difference is small, but if you look at this small gain, in reality the same sized panel from thin film solar panels will generate about 33% more energy per square foot.
Putting this into numbers, a panel that could generate 50 watts of energy using the older photovoltaic technology would now generate about 66 watts of energy now. This would in essence reduce your panel needs by 33% as well.
Thin film solar panels offer us a promising future in solar power generation that is clean, green and easy on the pocket book. But the drawback is we will be having to wait a couple of years before you and I get involved with these new technologies.