How much EXTRA POWER can PERC MONO Solar Panels produce compared with standard Mono / Poly panels? March 18 2017
Many people often assume (wrongly) that all solar panels are created equally, and they just base their decision (mostly) on the nameplate rating of a panel (eg a 250w panel), but as we can below in our own testing comparing standard 250w mono solar panels against latest 305w PERC MONO technology, this is not actually the case in the real world power output.
Using the world famous Tigo Energy panel level monitoring system to report the live power ratings for every panel on our site, we can clearly see that even though there's only a 55w / 22% nameplate difference in wattage between these panels, there's actually up to a 35% power output compared with a standard 250w mono / poly panel. This actually ends up being 13% more power output than the nameplate rated difference as an advantage in terms of the REAL WORLD energy output from the PERC MONO panels during our own testing on our live test site in Mt Maunganui Tauranga (New Zealand).
In the best cases we’ve even observed up to 50% more real world power output from our 305w PERC MONO panels compared with a standard 300w mono / poly panel during our NZ testing. This translates to a difference of 3.5Amps output vs 7.5Amps output going into the clients battery on the same roof top when testing with 1 std panel vs one of our PERC MONO panels.
For people who care about the output of their on-grid, hybrid or off-grid system yearly output and especially their Winter, Autumn and Spring power production then PERC mono panels are certainly something well worth considering (even though they do cost a little more per panel) as they actually deliver some good real world efficiency gains (up to 13% more during our own testing) thanks to high efficiency latest technology cells with tiny mirror reflectors in the rear of the cells.
Typically the difference in cost is usually only around a small $80-110 cost extra (per panel), yet this extra cost often pays for itself within the first few years of running an off-grid system due to saving needing to run the generator for as many hours throughout the year. Nowdays the solar panels themselves are actually one of the cheapest parts of a good solar power system, where as only 5 years ago the solar panels themselves were one of the largest costs of the entire system.
Things such as alloy racking / mounting kit prices have stayed about the same and labour prices have actually increased, and everyone seems to be running out of good (un-shaded) roof top areas, so the real question is WHY would people want to waste their time, money and roof space installing low efficiency panels when once the "TRUE COSTS" are actually calculated it actually makes better sense to install latest technology higher efficiency panels in many cases.
One of our clients (Kevin in Kerikeri) had installed 12 x Hyundai 265w (3.48kW) of mono panels on his roof 1 year ago, and then this year he installed an additional 10 of our 290w (2.9kW) of our PERC MONO panels (on a different string so that the 2 sets of panels would not affect each other), and the 2.9kW of PERC MONO panels actually produced MORE power output each day even though there was 580watts less of panels installed. Yes before you ask all the panels were on the exact same roof top, facing the same orientation & tilt angle etc. He was shocked with how much extra power the PERC MONO panels were producing for his site each day and he now felt that the existing MONO / POLY technology had now been "Outdated and Supersceeded by these new high efficiency PERC MONO panels".
Note: We have also ran the same tests on our 290w, 295w, 300w and 305w PERC MONO panels to also verify that they too show the same level of increased power production compared with standard panels, and yes all of our PERC MONO panels showed this additional power output.
For those of you who want to read up about the technology behind PERC MONO panels that help them achieve this extra output, then please read this article here: Why are high efficiency PERC MONO solar panels becoming popular?
The above link is well worth your 5 minutes of time spent reading through and you will learn alot.