Solar panels are a viable and practical option, but something new that has recently come to the stage is a roof made of solar tiles instead of panels installed onto a roof. ![]() They are becoming more common as they go down in price and up in efficiency, but with all of the new research and discoveries that have come with the evolution of panels, new technology has surfaced that has the capability to change the face of solar installation as we move ahead into the future. Panels took a little while to come into common use, but they have grown in usage by 25% each year for the last five years, and it has been the fastest growing renewable energy resource for years. Money goes into the research and trial processes, and many processes take lots of time and money before they are commonly available for a reasonable price. Conventional panel efficiencies can reach 25%, but commercially available panels typically range from 18% to 22%īecause of their lower efficiencies, current thin-film systems require more roof space than conventional panels, meaning they won't be suitable for a large number of homes.Solar technology is changing and evolving every day to create new ways to produce clean energy. Thin-film solar panel efficiency varies depending on the type of material but can be expected to be between 7% and 18%. There can also be concerns over durability with flexible panels, and some materials used in their production, like cadmium, are extremely toxic. The less expensive of the thin film technologies tend to be less efficient than a conventional rooftop panel, while still costing more than a rigid silicon-based module. "There's lots of other flavors of PV, and a lot of them aren't very widespread when it comes to residential," Wheeler said. Some flexible solar panels can already beat those glass panels in terms of efficiency by a wide margin, but at a significant cost.įor homeowners, the industry's focus remains on those big glass rectangles. ![]() Today, flexible panels compete against a massive solar industry that mostly pumps out rigid silicon-based rooftop panels at ever cheaper costs. Airubon/Getty Images What are the downsides of flexible solar panels? Not all thin-film solar panels are flexible, like these amorphous silicon models. Some solar tiles make use of thin films for rooftops. You could imagine flexible photovoltaics covering a car or any part of a building, including windows. "Something we say around NREL is 'PV everywhere' - if you could have a flexible, roll-out PV technology you can imagine lots of places to put this stuff," another NREL researcher, Lance Wheeler, said. The clear advantage of flexible solar panels is the ability to install them on a wider variety of surfaces and locations. What are the benefits of flexible solar panels? There are also products on the market that use very thin monocrystalline silicon modules similar to rigid rooftop panels but with some limited amount of flexibility. Newer, emerging technologies that could have flexible applications in the future include perovskite, organic and quantum dot photovoltaics. "You can also make them foldable."Ī number of technologies harnessing different materials have been used over the decades to develop thin film or flexible solar modules, including amorphous silicon, copper indium gallium selenide, cadmium telluride and gallium arsenide. ![]() Part of the question is how flexible," Reese said. Matthew Reese, a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado explained thin film panels don't have to be flexible, but materials tend to become flexible the thinner they get.
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