By Dave DeGraaff and Gilad Almogy
Editors Note: In 2020, SunPower announced the completion of the strategic spin-off of its manufacturing division into a separate business named Maxeon Solar Technologies, Ltd. As a result, SunPower has expanded its offerings to drive future growth. The SunPower Equinox® system now offers multiple panel options, including front- and back-contact panels, all of which are responsibly and rigorously quality tested to provide the best energy solution for your home.
For 30 years SunPower has been designing and manufacturing the highest quality solar systems using innovative technology to generate clean energy to power our world.
Earlier this year SunPower acquired Cogenra Solar, a Fremont, CA-based start-up company that pioneered a new way to build a solar panel, developing a strong portfolio of intellectual property.
By combining Cogenra’s outstanding Research and Development team with SunPower’s experience and quality and reliability know-how we’ve built a new type of photovoltaic panel: the SunPower Performance Series.
The Performance Series commercial solar panel uses a new solar cell interconnection technique that generates more power compared to conventional commercial panels. This larger panel, 350 watts, generates 15 percent more power than a conventional commercial panel, with an efficiency of 17 percent.*As used throughout, “Conventional Commercial Panel” means a panel with 305W, 15.8% efficiency and approximately 1.93m2.
We accomplished this by eliminating the reflective copper ribbons that partially shade the front of solar cells in conventional commercial panels, enabling the P-Series cells to capture more light. We reduced the resistance to current within the solar panel and made the new solar panel bigger.
The Performance Series is uniquely well-suited to larger roofs, for example in commercial uses. Because of its unique internal circuit, the P-Series panel is less susceptible to conditions where there’s shade or dirt on the panel. This results in more energy production over time compared to conventional commercial panels.*Conventional Commercial Panels produce 66% power with more than 10 cm of shade along the bottom edge, while Performance Series produces 92%.
Although the SunPower E-Series and X-Series remain the right choices for customers who want the best in performance and reliability, the Performance Series panel provides a strong value proposition to customers who have enough available roof space to meet their solar energy production needs with a lower efficiency panel.
Using methods perfected over the past three decades, SunPower designed the Performance Series to meet our quality and reliability standards. We are backing this new panel with our industry-leading combined 25-year Product and Power warranty.
We expect the new Performance Series panel to be available toward the end of 2016.
Gilad Almogy is Vice President/General Manager of SunPower’s Performance Series, and Dave DeGraaff is Vice President/General Manager of SunPower’s Module Products.
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