Will my solar system be outdated as soon as I install it?
Modern inverters are 95-96% efficient. There isn’t much room for these devices to improve because heat is a natural by-product of converting high voltage DC electricity to standard household AC electric. The panels themselves haven’t been seeing much improvements as far as efficiency is concerned, they have been seeing improvements in manufacturing cost reductions which is more important than efficiency. Making Solar affordable is much more important than the efficiency of the panels. More efficient panels just mean you can produce more power with a smaller area of panels. We closely follow the industry so we stay on top of the latest news and technology.
One of the latest solar collector products on the market are Solyndra panels. These panels are a thin film product rolled and placed in a tube, the idea is that they do not need to be tilted because they are in a tube shape. To use them you need a commercial rooftop with a white roof. They also collect the reflected energy off the white roof. As for long term viability and performance, we’re keeping our eyes on them. They are not more efficient, thin film is about half as efficient as crystalline cells, however the idea behind their design is cutting edge and their product could impact the industry once their reliability is vetted.
