Thin Film vs Silicon Solar

Windsun

Interesting read on Unisolars vs crystalline panels and how not knowing what you are getting can cost you money.

niel

Re: Thin Film vs Silicon Solar

that isn't good news for the many of us that have these pvs, but over the years it's something i have come to half expect to be. i never understood why the price per watt on those pvs were in line with the same price per watt that more efficient pvs had and aren't the thin film's cheaper to make too? imo these should've been 1/2 the cost per watt as they take up more than twice the area to produce the rated power and this posted article says the rated power isn't there either so maybe these should've been the $1 per watt pvs. i haven't been using my amateur radio equipment for some time now to gauge the pvs' performances as of late.
how about you ken(qik), how are your 64s holding up against spec?

Solar Guppy

Re: Thin Film vs Silicon Solar

I have been saying this for as long as I've been in solar, Asi sucks and any marketing material that claims otherwise isn't worth the paper its printed on

I found in 2003, Asi that was installed by FSEC, some at Disney in Orlando, they were performing horribly, many failures and of all the FSEC Asi systems installed in the 1998-99 time frame all have failed, meaning the systems are so bad, they are offline 100%, scrapped and or abandon

The "new" coming of Asi, that being all the regurgitated PR of less than a buck a watt and the billions being spent won't be any better for long term reliability, I just shake my head at all the money being poured into Asi promises. It never worked, it will never work as well as Si.

Nothing beats string ribbon ( Evergreens process ) ... if the scaling continues as volumes increase, I think it will be cheaper than Asi, without any of the faults

Oh, guess I should say this is IMHO

stephendv

Re: Thin Film vs Silicon Solar

Here's a study in Spanish of comparative installations of poli and thin film. In the south, with very hot summers, the thin film out produced the poli's - this was in a fortunate situation where the same roof had both poli and thin film installed.

http://www.solarweb.net/forosolar/downloads.php?do=file&id=1&act=down

The results of the test in Almeria:
- 30 degree inclination
- Poli SOLON 210 Wp = 1471 kWh/kWp
- Amorfo KANEKA TEA108 Wp = 1512 kWh/kWp

- 10 degree inclination
- Poli SOLON 210 Wp = 1378 kWh/kWp
- Amorfo KANEKA TEA108 Wp = 1428 kWh/kWp

Not all thin film panels are equal and installing a good quality panel in a hot area when you aim to maximise yearly production is probably something to consider and not dismiss out of hand.

Solar Guppy

Re: Thin Film vs Silicon Solar

Devil is in the details, how many of each, what was used for the measurements and loads lets check back next year to see how its going.

With proper logging, I have never seen an Asi out perform a Si installation and in all cases over time the Asi gets worse with high failure rates

n3qik

Re: Thin Film vs Silicon Solar

This got my attention very quickly.

What I have is 8 Unisolar US-64 on the shed and 7 Unisolar ES-62 on the house. All but 4 of the US-64 are 1-2 years old, the other 4 US-64 are 10 years old. All are with-in 95% of manufacture specs.

On 6-7-09, My C60 logged a record high of 367.6 total amp hours, For a estimated 4,962.60 watts.

I have not worked with any Si panels, so I can not state if this is good or bad.

As you can see from my homepage, the setup is far from optimum.

Windsun

Re: Thin Film vs Silicon Solar

The problems we have seen have not been with the standard framed US-64's but the shingles, stick-on, and similar type panels. Back a few years ago we used to do a few US-64 installations when the panels were still available, and we had little problem - but we were also realistic about their output. We never encouraged the use of them for fixed installs - to us, their main benefit was that they had no glass and were good for situations where that would be an issue.

n3qik wrote: »

This got my attention very quickly.

What I have is 8 Unisolar US-64 on the shed and 7 Unisolar ES-62 on the house. All but 4 of the US-64 are 1-2 years old, the other 4 US-64 are 10 years old. All are with-in 95% of manufacture specs.