Dr. Richard Swanson, Founder, President and Chief Technical Officer, SunPower, shares details about efficiency and system costs in part two of our solar panel efficiency video series

This week’s blog post is the second installment of our three-part series with solar expert Dr. Richard Swanson.

In this installment Dr. Swanson explains why solar panel efficiency is such an important variable when calculating ROI and the total cost of a solar installation.

As Dr. Swanson explains:

"Efficiency is probably the single most important number in determining the cost of the electricity you get from the solar system."

So please take a minute and learn about the "very dramatic effects" of efficiency, and why SunPower continually strives to improve solar panel efficiency.

In the final installment of this series next week, Dr. Swanson will walk you through SunPower’s history of solar cell efficiency and where it is headed in the future. If you crave more solar discussions, but just cannot wait a week, join our Facebook community at www.facebook.com/sunpower.

Over the years we have found that while more and more people understand that solar energy is a great alternative to fossil fuels, many are still in the dark, so to speak, about solar cell efficiency.

In the following three part video blog series Dr. Richard Swanson, Founder, President and Chief Technical Officer of SunPower, shares some of his solar expertise and discusses the importance of solar panel efficiency. Dr. Swanson is a true solar energy pioneer who developed one of the first high efficiency photovoltaic solar cells to start SunPower 25 years ago.

In this first installment, Dr. Swanson explains solar cell efficiency and how higher efficiency solar panels benefit home owners. In clearing up the questions ‘what is solar cell efficiency and is there a limit to solar efficiency?,’ Dr. Swanson provides the following insight:

"Energy and sunlight are hitting your house in abundance. What we’re trying to do is to take the energy that is in the sunlight and convert it to electrical energy you can use to power your refrigerator and your lights, things like that" If you could turn all of the energy from the sunlight hitting your solar panels into electrical energy, the efficiency ratio would be 100 percent. But you can’t get that much out. The best efficiency you could ever get is 30 percent. SunPower is trying to improve the solar cell to reach that theoretical maximum efficiency of 30 percent. Where does the other 70 percent go? It turns into heat."

Additionally, Dr. Swanson explains how higher efficiency solar panels benefit home owners:

"After accounting for trees, pipes, etc. the typical house has a much smaller amount of useable roof area [for a solar system] than you might think. From that small region, you want to get enough energy to run your whole house " and that requires highly efficient solar cells."

We hope that the interview, filmed at SunPower’s very own Richmond, CA facility, will put you on the path to solar illumination. Let us know if you found this video helpful and what other solar panel efficiency questions you have!

Next week, Dr. Swanson will explain why solar panel efficiency is so important in calculating ROI and the total cost of a solar installation. If you crave some more solar discussion before then, join our community on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sunpower.

Enjoy!

In this final installment of our solar panel efficiency series, Dr. Richard Swanson, Founder, President and Chief Technical Officer, SunPower, takes us through the history of solar panel efficiency and what direction it will take in the future.

As Dr. Swanson wraps up this efficiency series, we will explore SunPower’s past and peek into what the future has in store for SunPower and solar panel efficiency. After all, SunPower announced last month it had established the new world record at 24.2% solar cell efficiency: http://bit.ly/anEdic.

Among the areas discussed are the maximum possible efficiency level of a silicon solar cell and SunPower’s current focus on lowering the production costs of high-efficiency cells.

If you crave more solar discussions about SunPower, or would like to learn more about solar panel efficiency, join the conversation on our Facebook community at www.facebook.com/sunpower.