Amorphous Or Crystalline Solar Panels

Quite often we re asked about the advantages of monocrystalline panels and polycrystalline solar modules over their amorphous thin film counterparts.

Amorphous or crystalline solar panels.

Here are the instructions how to enable javascript in your web browser. When i announced that we ll be offering 25w crystalline panels we received a few emails asking why we re going to offer crystalline when we say how much better amorphous panels are. Used as semiconductor material for a si solar cells or thin film silicon solar cells it is deposited in thin films onto a variety of flexible substrates such as glass metal and plastic. They are solid black without the normal silicon cell outlines you see on the face of a crystalline solar panel.

Problem for amorphous panel mfg rs crystalline panels dropped below 2 per watt and getting close to 1 per watt. Usually thin film solar panels are lightweight and flexible making them easy to install. In addition polycrystalline solar panels tend to have a blue hue instead of the black hue of monocrystalline panels. Without any doubt amorphous panels are exponentially better suited for the field radio operator but that comes with a much higher price.

Other issue is that amorphous panels are about 1 2 the efficiency of crystalline panels so you need 2x the square footage and racking wiring etc for the same amount of power. Like conventional solar panels amorphous solar panels are made from silicon but they are constructed in a different way. Instead of being constructed from solid silicon wafers like mono or poly crystalline solar panels amorphous panels are made by depositing non crystalline silicon on a substrate like glass plastic or metal one layer of silicon on an amorphous solar panel can be as thin. Polycrystalline solar panels are also made from silicon.

In our solar secrets book we explain the advantages of amorphous panels thin film low light compared to the crystalline panels. Amorphous offers the benefit of operating in lower light conditions and hence is suitable for many applications that are used in lighting since it will be able to put some charge into a battery at a lower light level than crystalline solar panels. Amorphous is lower cost than crystalline although it s less efficient in converting sunlight to. Polycrystalline solar panels generally have lower efficiencies than monocrystalline options but their advantage is a lower price point.

Amorphous silicon a si is the non crystalline form of silicon used for solar cells and thin film transistors in lcds. Thin film solar panels are completely different from monocrystalline and polycrystalline solar panels. Amorphous silicon cells generally feature low efficiency but are one of the most. In all our grid connect packages we only use good quality poly or monocrystalline panels except in very specific circumstances for the.