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Glass is a vital part of almost every solar panel installed on Australian roofs.\u00a0 The sheets of glass used to protect solar cells are long lasting, non-reactive, very tough, and — above all else — it’s transparent.\u00a0 As a result glass functions far better than wood, cheese, iron, or mucus.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While not as strong as diamond or transparent aluminium<\/a>1<\/a><\/sup> it does have a significant cost advantage over those materials.<\/p>\n Because glass is such a great material for the front of solar panels, at some point a bright spark decided it would be even better to have glass on the back as well.\u00a0 And you know what?\u00a0 He or she was right.\u00a0 Glass backing is superior to the plastic backsheet used in standard solar panels, but has the disadvantages of being heavier and more expensive.<\/p>\n Another disadvantage of using two sheets of glass to make a solar panel sandwich is there is no good agreement on what to call them.\u00a0 Terms used in the order of most Google love to least Google love are:<\/p>\n The term I tried to popularize, “crunchy silicon sandwich” has precisely zero hits, so clearly I am not the funky trendsetter I always thought I was.\u00a0 Because I think the popularity of the term glass-glass is due to its use in Germany2<\/a><\/sup>, I will use the more euphonious name double glass, which I think rolls off the tongue of English speakers a little better.<\/p>\n Another important term is “bifacial” which is used for solar panels that can use of light coming from the front as well as the rear.\u00a0 All bifacial panels are double glass, but not all double glass panels are bifacial.\u00a0 I think the term bifacial sounds a little strange, but if they had called them Janus<\/a> panels very few people would get the joke and if they called them two-faced panels they would carry a bad connotation.\u00a0 Namely Tommy Lee Jones’s acting in Batman Forever:<\/p>\n Glass doesn’t have a great reputation for resilience.\u00a0 We say delicate things are fragile as glass, we describe a boxer with an easily broken mandible as having a glass jaw, and I have a heart of glass<\/a> because I am sensitive yet quick to love.\u00a0 Also because I eat chocolate coated bacon three times a day.<\/p>\n I thought people’s estimation of the strength of glass would increase because so many of us carry around an incredibly tough sheet of it less than a millimeter thick on the front of our smart phones.\u00a0 But because we all too often pay ridiculous amounts of money for our electronic squawk boxes, when it does break it makes us completely forget about all the times it didn’t.<\/p>\n The glass used on solar panels is strong enough to withstand 2.5 cm hail, which is as large as it normally gets.\u00a0 Unfortunately, things aren’t always normal in Toowoomba<\/a> and during one storm fist sized hail started smashing through our roof.\u00a0 Solar panels won’t survive rare, giant, horse killing3<\/a><\/sup> hail stones, but they will stop a hole being punched through your roof, so their sacrifice won’t be in vain.<\/p>\nToo Much Terminology<\/h2>\n
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Bifacial Solar Panels<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n\u00a0Double Glass Panels Are Durable<\/h2>\n