2023 Best Solar Panel Comparison. REC vs Panasonic vs QCELLS vs SunPower vs Tesla vs Silfab

what's up guys my name is Julian your solar expert and today I have two white boards but more on the second board later I'm going to be explaining everything you need to know as simply as possible about how to know which panels were really good and which ones are not that good I get questions all the time from people that really indicate that they need help just understanding some basic concepts about the panels and so I'm going to be explaining the efficiencies the nmot ratings the temperature coefficient and the degradation as simply as possible so you understand for yourself how to know if a panel is good or not okay so let's get started here so the efficiency is the number one most important rating that you need to kind of understand and the general rule of thumb is anything over 20 percent is going to be considered really good anything under 20 kind of mediocre nowadays there are some panels that are going to be even over 21 even over 22 percent and those are going to be your super premium modules so pretty much is going to tell you what percent of the light that's hitting the panel is being converted to electricity 20 or so doesn't really seem very high but that's actually pretty good for photovoltaic technology so uh some panels you know like the Panasonic and the recs and the sun Powers those are going to be your most efficient panels on the market and those are kind of the three that win that category now the nmot rating I have a whole nother video that I I made last year that explains this in more detail but basically the nmot rating is the the real world watt output when we see like the watt rating you know that's actually just going to be your standard test condition rating which is in a room temperature environment and you know you have a big bulb in front of the panel and it it's it's in a controlled environment so the nmot rating is actually a little bit of a better uh number to go off of and especially if people get confused about you know why the panel is rated so much higher than like what their inverter can output and this is actually what we're pairing you know the two products together with so the closer the nmot is to the standard test condition rating that's that can kind of be an indica cater for a higher quality panel so the temperature coefficient is a main factor for how there's a different number between the STC and the nmot the the temperature coefficient is going to tell us how well the panel does as it gets into hotter and hotter temperatures the watt rating that you see you know right on the on the label there that is when the panel is in a room temperature environment and a perfect environment to Output the most it could possibly output and when it's on your roof hot in the sun getting beaten all day you know think of like a computer when it gets hot it needs the fans to cool down solar panels are the same way they if they get too hot they're not going to perform as well so certain panels perform better in in the Heat and so that's a big differentiator for you know a more premium panel versus kind of a more middle of the road panel it's how well is it really going to produce when it gets hot up on your roof you you think solar panels want to be hot obviously because they're converting light to electricity but they don't actually want to be hot theoretically if you have like a 40 degree day and it's super Sunny like a like a bluebird day you know out on the slopes like that that's actually a perfect environment for a solar panel to produce really really quite a lot of power so the temperature coefficient actually tells us for every degree outside of its ideal temperature range which is usually around 40 to 44 degrees Celsius as you can see in the chart there's going to be a percent drop off for every temperature base or for every degree beyond that so the temperature coefficient leader here is Rec and Panasonic so if you're in a really hot environment Southern California Arizona Texas Florida you know anywhere where it's like pretty much over 80 degrees in the summertime the panels on your roof they're cooking they're like well into the hundreds at that point and so the the panels kind of down here the the lower quality panels that I have listed they get bogged down more in the heat so it's an important spec to kind of understand the temperature coefficient because a lot of people don't really talk about it but a lower temperature coefficient number is better so higher is not better in this case you want the lower number now degradation tells us how well over time the panel is going to perform it used to be you know 10 15 20 years ago to get a panel that only degraded less than 10 percent in 25 years was impossible but now actually we have our top premium products degrading less than 10 percent throughout a 25-year period which is pretty amazing actually so the rec Panasonic and sun power panels are going to have the least degradation overall and it's a 92 percent guarantee at year 25 which is pretty amazing Q cells is another good quality product in terms of degradation it's about a 14 degradation over 25 years Q cells out of like the the mid-tier panels is going to be my my favorite personally they've they're big company they've been around a long time now in terms of the the warranty if it has a labor warranty or not in the last column most Pro products do not and normally you need a special relationship between the installer and the manufacturer in order to have a labor warranty because the manufacturers are oftentimes you know they're worried that you know once the the panel leaves the the pallet you know the installers can damage it and then you know later the homeowners are coming after the manufacturers and it wasn't their fault the installers broke it so usually you have to have a quality installer that is uh in like a network or a preferred installer network but if you do with certain panels they give you labor warranties so you wouldn't have to come out of pocket you know to pay the contractor for example Rec Panasonic sun power those are those are three products that actually have the labor warranty built in so if you kind of understand efficiency nmot temp coefficient and degradation you're gonna be able to kind of look at the spec sheet yourself and easily know if a panel is really good or not so okay so how do we tie all these numbers together and understand out of all these panels I've listed here which one is actually the best all right off to a whiteboard too all right so okay so after looking at all these specs how do you kind of tie it all together and make sense of it and and kind of confirm for yourself which panel is best for you okay so there's one spec or or factor that we didn't consider on the first board which is the dimensions and the total area now a trend that is happening right now in solar industry is instead of making the panels more efficient and actually more power dense or able to you know output more power on a square foot basis they're just making the panels bigger they're adding more cells uh you know and there's they're making the panel bigger basically and so there's more surface area and so the overall wattage is bigger so what I've done here is I've drawn out all the dimensions and uh figured out the square inches for each panel and then I've taken the nmot and what I've done is I've divided the nmot by the area and we come out with a true perform per square foot rating and that'll tell us really at the end of the day when we you know Factor all these specs which one is actually going to produce the most power so I actually already labeled it here there's a star next to both of them and I found this really interesting because I hadn't actually uh I didn't know this until I did the calculation but there's a new Rec panel coming up the 430 it's being talked about quite a lot I hear a lot of questions on it and it's a different shape so the panel is wider and as you can see here like for example the 400 it's 71 inches tall by 38 inches wide and the new one is 68 inches tall by 42 inches wide and so as you can see basically it's a little shorter and wider and the cells are basically being turned they've figured out a way to do the wiring different which they claim is more efficient but I took the nmot rating for both the existing for Panasonic 410 which is actually a rebranded Rec Alpha Series so it's the same panel just with a different sticker on it and I compared the 410 to the new 430 coming out and if you break it down by the nmot rating at least on a per square inch basis the existing Panasonic 410 is by 0.1 watt is is actually outputting slightly more power than the new Rec coming out so I have to find out more information on this and kind of come come up with an explanation but I found that very interesting but basically to sum it up if you look at all these panels you're going to see that the rec and the Panasonic actually are going to give you the most power now next to my uh sun power I have a question mark I would love to give you a rating for the sun power panel but unfortunately SunPower for whatever reason you know they like to claim that they're the best but they actually are not telling us uh what the nmot rating of their product is I don't know if they are trying to keep it a secret most manufacturers are going to easily give us all the information the Q cell product overall is a solid product as you can see it's not the most efficient product on the market but it is a very high quality module with overall very good specs for the money qcells is actually the largest in terms of overall market share on this entire list also something to note here is I did put the Tesla panel down here but what a lot of people don't know is that the Tesla panel is actually a rebranded q cell 400. Tesla doesn't actually manufacture any solar panels or inverters they do manufacture the batteries but also about 75 percent of the lithium in a Tesla battery is actually a pan is Panasonic since there's so much to talk about and explain here if you need more information or you want me to dive in deeper to one of these topics just give me a call 760-473-5878 I'll help you out with your solar project I work in most of the United States I don't have every state covered but chances are if you're interested in solar I can help you out and I have a lot of these options available as well so different price points for different panels and I can go over the different options with you and kind of help you figure out which one is best for you in your specific case okay so now I'm going to talk a little bit about each panel and just kind of give you a little bit more detailed information about each one not relating to the specs specifically okay so the rec Alpha Series Rec has been around since 1996 one of the leaders in actually manufacturing solar panels and uh they actually have a contract with Panasonic Panasonic is having RAC sub manufacture their panels for them because they're so good good while Panasonic focuses on R D for Battery Technology development since that's the way that the market is going but the Alpha Series has been out on the market now for about three years and I've been actively selling it for three years it's been a great product I've literally never even seen one fail and uh it's fantastic I really recommend it the new one the 430 that's coming out I'm excited to see in reality how well it performs I talked to one of the engineers at the Anaheim Convention the solar convention re plus this year and he said that the the difference is in the wiring and how they turned the cells on the side kind of a unique Innovation but we'll see how it really performs in the real world now the Panasonic evervolt is actually a rebranded like I said RAC Alpha Series so that's technically the product that you're getting and I put the 410 and also the the 360 in here the 360 is a lot smaller it's a a 60 cell module versus the 410 being a 66 so it's about you know if you look at the dimensions of the the same width but 66 inches obviously requires more height and so that's where the uh the the watt gain is coming from if you are to take the 360 watt rating and you add 10 that's 36 Watts so that'd be 396 that you would get up to if you were to make it the same size so that gives you a true actual size to size comparison now Q cells is actually the leading um they're the leader in market share for residential solar they offer overall the the best I would say bang for your buck just in terms of quality price point performance so it's going to be what a lot of contractors like to buy because they can get really good deals on them certain contractors you know like the ones a lot of the ones I like to work with they have you know a little bit more of a premium mindset and they like to use like top of the line top of the line products but Q cells it's a really great product I've sold them for years I trust Q cells just as much as the other manufacturers but know that the performance is going to be a little bit lower than you know some of these top premium options the Q cell is 480 down here I just put that in there because it's a it's a bigger panel it's a silver framed mostly for commercial application but every once in a while when a customer is just super price oriented and they just want the best bang for their buck and they don't really care too much about you know having that like that all black aesthetic look the 480 qsaw if you can get it it's a good option the quality of the cells and everything it's the same as the 400 so quality wise it's fine it just doesn't really look as pretty with with sun power you know what I'm going to say is probably pretty controversial because they do all their marketing and pretty much try to position themselves as like the industry leader best of the best you know they have like this outrageous sales pitch basically telling you like that their panels are on the NASA you know space station and all that like okay that's great but the panels they sell are not what is on the NASA Space Station and some power in the last several years has kind of had a lot of issues um they split their company into two the manufacturing is is now being done by maxion so it's not really a sun power uh product technically speaking and then next year I was talking to the sun power rep at the re Plus Anaheim Convention event and the panel coming out next year that SunPower is going to be white labeling is actually made by First Solar which is a manufacturer that's been in the game for a really long time but they've really focused on Commercial and so they're they're creating a new product for sun power that is coming out I want to say in 20 late 2023 or early 2024 and that's that's actually going to be sunpower's new product so that's actually made by First Solar which is a whole nother company that has never been connected with SunPower until just recently so I'm not really exactly sure um what's going on in the long term with sun power I don't think they're going to be the king of solar like they claim they have been over the last few years in the future overall quality wise their Hardware is really great they use the end phase micro inverters in their AC panels so that's really what you're getting although I do believe it's still the iq7 it's not the new eight they don't have like a licensing for that um yet or something so it's it's the older technology it's something to know now as in terms of silfab they're pretty popular in terms of like a budget option you know they have like the North American made kind of like sales pitch going for them um in reality all this all the cells they're coming from overseas and made means just assembled so some of these panels are they say made in America it just means assembled but still fap is one of them they have an assembly plant up in I believe it's Bellingham Washington and they may overall overall they make a good panel it's not like the greatest panel or anything but it looks good if you get a great deal on them I'd say go for it but if you can get something better I would say go for that Canadian Solar they've been around a long time as well overall they make like a mid-tier product reliable and good quality but the the cells are gonna you know just maybe not be quite as efficient and not have the best degradation um very close but just they're they're not buying the the best cell technology to put in their panels basically Mission solar they're out of Texas their panels are pretty tough they have like good snow and wind load ratings and everything and their marketing is more geared towards how tough they are you know like the hail storms and Texas and such overall they make a good quality product good sells not necessarily the greatest cells but a good reliable company and then Tesla I put down here in Q cells in in parentheses and um Tesla doesn't actually make a panel they just rebranded the Q cells so it's that's what you're getting if you have a Tesla quote for the 400 watt it's just the the G10 qcell Duo which is a good panel but something to know about the Tesla systems as a side note is that they use a centralized inverter if if possible you want to use a micro inverter specifically by end phase if you can get that because that's going to be your by far best micro inverter on the market thank you so much guys I really hope that this video helped you understand how to know which solar panels are best on the market right now give me a call at 760-473-5878 I'll help you out and we'll go over your project uh specifically and figure out what the best solution is for you

Channel: Julian Todd-Borden

Views: 71,854

Keywords: REC, Panasonic, Sunpower, Tesla, Tesla solar, solar panel, Best solar panel, Tesla solar panel, QCELLS, Mission solar, Canadian Solar, Longi, silfab, Net metering, NEM2.0, NEM3.0, Net energy metering 3.0, Net energy metering, efficient solar panel

Id: QcJmqu5H8sE

Length: 18min 13sec (1093 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 17 2022