SolarCity says new panel will be industry’s most efficient

Limited production is set to start this month, but the plan is to start building 360 watt panels at SolarCity’s new 1-gigawatt plant opening in New York next year.

Fast Company’s Max Chafkin gives insight on SolarCity’s introduction of its new line of rooftop solar panels, which are a big upgrade in terms of module efficiency (or how much power they generate) than its previous offerings.

Sadly, we don’t know much about the technology that made the new record possible (“proprietary”, says the company), but it came from Silevo, the solar manufacturer that SolarCity bought a year ago for $200 million. SolarCity says that the increase in efficiency will make panels that are equal in size to competitors’, but produce “30-40 percent more power”.

SolarCity is now producing its panels at a 100 megawatt pilot facility in Fremont, California, near Tesla’s factory. In fact, Solar City’s solar panel manufacturing facility, in Buffalo, New York, has become the largest in North America. The company is now focused not only on installing solar panels, but also spending on innovating in the field.

It’s not the highest-level efficiency ever produced by a solar cell.

SolarCity expects to produce between 9,000 and 10,000 solar panels each day when the Buffalo facility reaches full capacity, which should be in early 2017, according to SolarCity spokesman Jonathan Bass.

The high-efficiency SolarCity panels will allow the company to design rooftop panels that produce the same amount of electricity as current systems, but with fewer panels. By photosynthesis standards – a plant is 5% efficient – that’s not bad, but humans believe solar panels should do better. It shows us that while panel technology is improving at a dramatic rate, it’s also an absolute necessity for the longer-term business model that residential solar companies depend on.

The sun-powered provider expects to install these new panels on rooftops and carports, initially and then move to commercial installations. Only one other residential solar installer – Vivint Solar – had more than a 3 percent market share, according to a report issued this week by GTM Research.