{"id":5938,"date":"2016-06-06T15:02:44","date_gmt":"2016-06-06T05:32:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=5938"},"modified":"2025-09-04T13:24:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T03:54:17","slug":"sunpower-solar-panels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/sunpower-solar-panels\/","title":{"rendered":"SunPower Solar Panels: One of the best panels lots of money can buy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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SunPower make very good, very expensive panels.<\/p><\/div>\n

SunPower<\/a> make some of the best\u00a0solar panels<\/a> in existence. Or at least some of the best on this planet. Perhaps Spectrolab<\/a> regularly shoots better ones into space to mars or somewhere, I don’t know. But if you want to buy something that is meant to go on a roof and not a space probe, then SunPower solar panels are hard to beat.<\/p>\n

Now note that I did say some of the best and not some of the cheapest<\/a>. If you haven’t worked out that the words cheap and best don’t normally go together, then I have a really low quality laptop held together with superglue and wooden rulers that I’d like to sell to you at a really high price.<\/p>\n

SunPower Pricing<\/h2>\n

So let’s deal with the elephant in the room right now:\u00a0 Sunpower solar panels’ prices. SunPower are one of about 30 panel brands that are called “Tier 1”. 1<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Eighty percent\u00a0of Tier 1 panels are made in China and are all sold in Australia at a\u00a0very similar price per Watt. Examples include Trina<\/a>, Jinko Solar<\/a>, Risen<\/a>, Renesola<\/a>, JA Solar<\/a> and Canadian Solar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you want to go up a notch in price, performance and durability, you are looking at what I call ‘Premium Tier 1’ brands. These include LG solar panels<\/a>, Q-Cells<\/a>, REC<\/a> and Winaico<\/a>. These generally sell for around 30% more than the regular Tier 1 brands.<\/p>\n

All on its own at the top of the price list are SunPower solar panels<\/a>, costing 75-100% more than a regular Tier 1 panel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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SunPower Solar Panels Price Relative to other brands<\/p><\/div>\n

But if you want Rolls-Royce quality, you have to pay for it, and on Friday I sat down to have a little chat with Chris O’Brien, the Managing Director of SunPower Australia. \u00a0I wanted to find out why people are prepared to almost pay twice as much\u00a0for\u00a0SunPower compared to a typical Chinese Tier 1 brand.<\/p>\n

What The Hell Is SunPower?<\/h2>\n

SunPower is a US company that produces panels in the Philippines, presumably because they saw the people there badly needed a boost to their low wages.<\/p>\n

The company was founded in 1985 by Richard Swanson, who first started investigating solar cells because he was fascinated with their use in space.\u00a0 The company spent $6 million developing space solar cells, but they were not a success and I couldn’t find a single example of their solar cells being blasted into orbit or beyond.\u00a0 I’m afraid Spectrolab pretty much has the space solar market stitched up.\u00a0 But I think SunPower deserves credit for trying.\u00a0 Personally, I wouldn’t compete against Spectrolab in anything, as they are clearly winner of the prize for having the company name that makes them sound most likely to attempt to kill James Bond.<\/p>\n

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SpectroLab: They have a James Bond name and they beat SunPower in the solar space race.<\/p><\/div>\n

Richard Swanson is also famous for Swanson’s Law, which states that for every doubling of production capability, the cost of solar panels<\/a> fall by 20%. And while the price of solar panels have had their ups and mostly downs, his law has done fairly well.\u00a0 So let’s all hope solar panels have a few more Swansons left in them.<\/p>\n

SunPower’s\u00a0Warranty Is The Best You Can Get<\/h2>\n

SunPower sell panels with a 25 year warranty. And that’s not just the performance warranty. I can buy cruddy solar panels from a company with an internet site that claims a photograph of an architect’s model is their factory and they will come with a 25 year performance warranty. While SunPower does have a 25 year performance warranty, I’m talking about their product warranty. That’s what’s important, because if your solar panel stops working, the performance warranty won’t cover that<\/a>.\u00a0 Only the product warranty does and SunPower Australia’s is 25 years, which is more than twice as long as the next best I am aware of.<\/p>\n

SunPower’s failure rate is 27 in 1\u00a0million. That means only one panel in 37,000 is defective and needs to be replaced. So if you have a rooftop solar system of around 5 kilowatts<\/a> with 15 panels, that means there is about one chance in 2,500 you will have a defective panel that needs to be returned. And those are damn good odds.<\/p>\n

Did I say return a panel? Actually, there is absolutely no need to return it.\u00a0 If you have a defective panel, SunPower will send someone to come and replace it.\u00a0 Now that is good service.\u00a0 And presumably they will take the old panel away and perform an autopsy to determine why it died so young and take steps to try to ensure it never happens again.<\/p>\n

How Do They Offer Twice The Warranty Of Anyone Else?<\/h2>\n

Thermal expansion is a major cause of solar panel failure.\u00a0 It results from temperature changes causing different materials to expand and contract at varying rates and puts strain on joins between different materials and can cause cracks to form in the thin metal wires that conduct electricity.\u00a0 Once those wires break and stop the flow of current they can form a hot spot that gradually burns through the protective encapsulate that covers it, which can lead to corrosion and the failure of the entire panel.<\/p>\n

SunPower claim to have\u00a0completely eliminated thermal expansion as a cause of failure, for at least the first 25 years of their panel’s life.<\/p>\n

They have done this by making the wires that collect electricity a fine patterned mesh on the back of the cell, which resembles a printed circuit board.\u00a0 And this arrangement is apparently great at distributing stress caused by expansion and helps keep it together.<\/p>\n

They have also greatly improved the survivability of connections between solar cells by having more of them and designing them so they suffer less stress from thermal expansion.<\/p>\n

The panels also have a thin copper backing. Copper is a soft, ductile metal useful for avoiding damage from thermal expansion and it is also excellent for resisting corrosion. Unfortunately, copper is expensive, so perhaps they could benefit from using a different material. Looking up the periodic table<\/a>, as I do at regular intervals, I see that elements with properties similar to copper are silver, gold, and something called roentgenium<\/a> which decays so fast it has severe trouble lasting 25 minutes let alone 25 years. So maybe copper is a good choice.<\/p>\n

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SunPower cells have a copper plate on the bottom and a light trapping surface on the top.<\/p><\/div>\n

Interestingly one of SunPower’s competitors in the premium solar panel market, Q-Cells<\/a> are working on a cell design (codename: Q.ANTUM<\/a>) that appears to be ‘inspired’ by SunPower but\u00a0uses aluminium instead of copper, and has the reflector layer under the silicon:<\/p>\n

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Q-Cells appear to be moving to a Sunpower style back contact, but they have chosen aluminium.<\/p><\/div>\n

Aluminium is much cheaper than copper – so it will be interesting to see how the final Q-Cells Q.antum panels compare in performance, durability and price.\u00a0Watch this space I’ll let you know as soon as I can get more information.<\/p>\n

SunPower Panels Produce More Electricity Per Watt Than Most<\/h2>\n

SunPower panels are extremely reliable, but in addition, they claim to\u00a0produce more energy over the course of their lifespan than many\u00a0other panels. They achieve this in several ways.<\/p>\n