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Of course efficiency is important. 10% is horrible by today's standards. They are up to 20%, which would save you half of the panels cutting your costs in hal

Of course efficiency is important. 10% is horrible by today's standards. They are up to 20%, which would save you half of the panels cutting your costs in half. The cost (or revenue) of an installation is directly connected to the efficiency of your solar-technology. If you only have a fixed space to build it in, and your panels are twice as efficient, you make twice as much power and twice as much energy.

Alex3917 19y ago
Price isn't proportional to efficiency. Making a solar panel that's 10% efficient instead of 20% efficient might require only 1/20th as much silicon. Also, the current limiting factor is the cost of manufacturing, not the cost of land. That's why companies are racing to build a new generation of low-efficiency low-cost photovoltaics.
- anamax 19y ago
  When did doubling the size of my roof become cheaper than a solar system? Silicon isn't the only cost. As I wrote, inefficient technology makes small systems uneconomic. FWIW, the systems with the highest efficiency right now actually have less silicon than typical rooftop systems. Note also that there is no one "cost of silicon" - silicon prices vary widely. Many of the low-silicon cost/efficiency systems actually use more silicon than some of the high-cost/high-efficiency systems.
  - maximilian 19y ago
    If its really inneficient, its like, whats the point? Its easier from a manufacturing standpoint to make something cheaper than more efficient. The efficiency often lies with the underlying physics and often hits a hard theoretical limit that can't be passed because it violates thermodynamics, or something like that. If you came up with an amazing system that was horribly expensive to produce but waaay more efficient than everybody else, you'd still get rich because some large technology company would buy it and figure out how to use scale and other techniques to bring the price down. Just like plasma TVs. They cost an order of magnitude less than they did 7 years ago, but their picture quality hasn't changed by an order of magnitude. (its hard to measure picture quality in quantitative terms, but you get the point).

Alex3917 19y ago

Price isn't proportional to efficiency. Making a solar panel that's 10% efficient instead of 20% efficient might require only 1/20th as much silicon. Also, the current limiting factor is the cost of manufacturing, not the cost of land. That's why companies are racing to build a new generation of low-efficiency low-cost photovoltaics.

anamax 19y ago
When did doubling the size of my roof become cheaper than a solar system? Silicon isn't the only cost. As I wrote, inefficient technology makes small systems uneconomic. FWIW, the systems with the highest efficiency right now actually have less silicon than typical rooftop systems. Note also that there is no one "cost of silicon" - silicon prices vary widely. Many of the low-silicon cost/efficiency systems actually use more silicon than some of the high-cost/high-efficiency systems.
- maximilian 19y ago
  If its really inneficient, its like, whats the point? Its easier from a manufacturing standpoint to make something cheaper than more efficient. The efficiency often lies with the underlying physics and often hits a hard theoretical limit that can't be passed because it violates thermodynamics, or something like that. If you came up with an amazing system that was horribly expensive to produce but waaay more efficient than everybody else, you'd still get rich because some large technology company would buy it and figure out how to use scale and other techniques to bring the price down. Just like plasma TVs. They cost an order of magnitude less than they did 7 years ago, but their picture quality hasn't changed by an order of magnitude. (its hard to measure picture quality in quantitative terms, but you get the point).