Best Solar panels?

[russ]

Whoopee, what a waste of time and money. I can buy a manufactured panel for $100 and they actually work and come with a warranty.

Once I deleted her links Carrie lost interest.

[KRenn]

Look at power tolerance loss, makes no sense to pay full price for a 5kw system when in reality you're probably getting 5-10% less.


As far as panels go, I'm a big fan of Siliken, Suntech, Mitsubishi, Schuco, Schott and Solon.


Also efficiency means jack crap when it comes to solar other than squeezing more power into a tighter space which is not often a big concern. Efficiency has nothing to do with overall power production either.

[KRenn]

[QUOTE=DrEvil;31309]Thank you Mike, Xavier and Russ for the comments so far. A bit more reading this time I’m afraid. I hope you don’t mind! First of all - I am not too bothered who installs my system at the moment. I more interested in trying to understand the best system out there to maximise my long term return. Then I’ll pick someone to install!

I am under the impression that the Sanyo HIT240w panels are better than many if not all of its competitors? The Suntech panels are 1.65m x 1m and obviously take up more space than the smaller Sanyo panels and I can’t get as big a system on my roof when comparing what I could get through the smaller Sanyo panels. The Suntech Pluto 200w are smaller than the Suntech and more like the Sanyo Hybrid product in size but very different in production. The Sanyo HIT240w can produce 240w per panel obviously but more importantly it is approximately 25% above standard production whereas Suntech is 6% - 7% above standard. So whilst there is a substantial difference in cost, there is a substantial difference in return I am advised.
I am told that I best install on 2 roofs which means I need to install a 2 track inverter to run them separately or even solar Edge which is designed for multi- arrays and shade management but even on a single array it will outperform any inverter as it never takes an "average" performance but always the maximum from every panel. Each panel has a power optimiser (or optimizer for all my American friends).
So these are the some of the system (panel + inverter) combinations I’m currently thinking of installing on my roof.

3.6KW comprising 15 x Sanyo HIT240w panels - Kostal Piko 3.6 Inverter
3.6KW comprising 15 x Sanyo HIT240w panels - Sunny Boy Inverter
3.6KW comprising 15 x Sanyo HIT240w panels – Solar Edge inverter System

The most expensive quote is the final of the three which is about