Choosing the Best Brand for Your Solar Panel System
The market for alternative energy systems is represented by many manufacturers of solar panels. When choosing a solar panel for a home or commercial building, it is desirable that the manufacturer be known and have a long history. The demand can be judged from the Tier-1 list of the authoritative financial and analytical agency Bloomberg. These are manufacturers who have their own full production cycle: from the production of photovoltaic cells to the assembly of solar panels systems.
We offer you to get acquainted with the most famous manufacturers of solar panels from the Tier-1 list.
- Suntech (China);
- Trina Solar (China);
- Longi Solar (China);
- Jinko Solar (China);
- JA Solar (China);
- Risen (China);
- Seraphim Solar (China).
In addition, there are several other top-level companies. For example, ABi-Solar is one of the leaders among European manufacturers of photovoltaic system components. At the moment, equipment is manufactured at East Asian companies (Sunrise Solartech, Q-Solar, APC, Stark-County). The head office is located in the UK. It is also worth paying attention to the products of SOLARCITY. This is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of electrical products, headquartered in Japan.
Relatively recently there was a merger of a large Japanese corporation with the U.S. manufacturer of electric cars Tesla Motors. Solar panels of Viessmann, which belongs to the concern Viessmann Werke GmbH & Co. KG, which produces heating/cooling systems and industrial plants. The Viessmann Group includes 22 companies in 11 countries around the world. The main principle of the company is stability, as Viessmann is a family-owned concern.
The service life of solar panels for homes described above is at least 25 years.
The manufacturer’s warranty on solar panels is provided in two types:
- Product warranty is a guarantee against damage caused by a manufacturing defect. Most often, the term of such a warranty is 10-12 years, depending on the manufacturer.
- Performance warranty is a performance guarantee of 25 years while maintaining at least 80% capacity.
When choosing, you must also take into account such characteristics as the temperature coefficient. This indicator shows how the increase or decrease in temperature affects the output current and output voltage of the module. As the temperature rises, the current increases, the voltage and power of the module decrease. Therefore, the smaller the temperature coefficient of power change, the better. Efficiency is also important. The higher the efficiency, the smaller the area of modules required to generate energy. The efficiency of single-crystal panels is 2-4% higher than that of polycrystalline modules.
In general, manufacturers offer three types of solar systems: polycrystalline, single-crystal and thin-film. The latter are not widespread at the moment, as they are significantly inferior in performance to crystal modules. But monocrystalline solar panels are made of solid silicon crystal. The process is quite time consuming and expensive, which contributes to higher costs.
The price of polycrystalline photovoltaic modules is lower, due to the production of less expensive technology and a simpler way.
