In our Solar Secrets book, we explain the advantages of Amorphous panels (thin film low light) compared to the crystalline panels.
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.
The reason for this is that the Solar manufacturing industry keeps setting itself up for failure and every manufacturer of the amorphous panels that we wanted to get goes bankrupt. The misinformation from crystalline panel companies about how theirs are more efficient is a scam.Yes, they’re more efficient only under direct full light but throughout the day, as we said in Solar Secrets, the thin film panels give you more electricity total since it can actually makes use of marginal light. The last company we tried to order amorphous panels from went bankrupt.
The cheap Chinese made panels flood the market and this undercuts the US or European made panels and makes it difficult for them to sell them at a profit so they’re forced to take a loss and then forced out of business, literally. The US has put some taxes on the solar panels from China but that didn’t do much and I don’t know if this actually represents the situation accurately but they have hurt the solar industry elsewhere.
Amorphous panels can be made for much less than crystalline panels and it seems the industry is set up for self-sabotage because they seem to want to do whatever it takes to make sure these amorphous panels stay high at ridiculous prices and/or are impossible to get. Perhaps they’re protecting their infrastructure that is setup for crystalline panels, which are an inferior technology.
When our Federal Government makes more money in taxes per gallon of gas at the pump than the oil companies make in profits, does anyone actually believe they could care less about really moving forward with green technologies?
Watch this:
Stanley Ovshinsky is the inventor of the NiMH rechargable batteries and a great low light thin film solar panel. His technology could blanket the world in low cost low light solar panels. He says it himself that throughout the day, they give you more light and that is one of the points we address in Solar Secrets. Does it look like suppression to you? A solar technology that can be much less expensive than crystalline panels and put out more energy through the entire day than crystalline panels? Why does one thin film manufacturer after another keep getting driven out of business?
Whatever it is, this is why we’re not able to offer affordable amorphous or other thin film low light panels to you but we wish we could!
For now, these 25 watt crystalline panels that we’re testing are the best non-thin film ones yet and we’ll be placing an order for a lot of these soon. At some point in the future when we can get our hands on the thin films at a reasonable price with the right specs, we will definitely be offering them.
I hope that helps to clarify why we are offering the crystalline panels even though we’d rather offer the amorphous panels.
Sincerely,
Aaron Murakami
Tesla Chargers