Renesola solar panels reviews

Renesola is a Chinese producer of tier one solar panels with 10 year product and 25 year performance warranties. Their panels are corrosion resistant which makes them suitable for installation by the sea. Renesola has offices in both Sydney and Melbourne.

In addition to solar panels, Renesola also produces string inverters, microinverters, and LED lighting. They are also heavily involved in the development and construction of solar farms and large scale rooftop solar projects.

Manufacturing Capacity

Renesola is a medium sized producer of solar panels. They had approximately 1.2 gigawatts of solar panel production capacity in 2015 and while it's not on their website, Renesola has informed me by email their production capacity is now 1.5 gigawatts.

In comparison, the world’s largest producer of solar panels in 2016 was Jinko Solar with a production of approximately 6.5 to 6.6 gigawatts of panels.

Renesola claims to have sold 12 gigawatts of “solar products” over the lifetime of their company, but they don’t specify what they count as a solar product.

Company History

Renesola was founded in 2005. The company rapidly expanded and claims that in 2013 and 2014 more Renesola panels were installed in Australia than any other brand. Unfortunately, like many companies that expand rapidly, they ran into severe financial difficulty which has limited their expansion over the past several years.

They currently employ around 5,600 people, mostly in China. I don’t know how many are employed producing solar panels and how many in other parts of the business such as LED light manufacture.

Renesola Panels

Renasola produces a variety of different series of solar panels, including a number of standard sized, 60 cell panels, which are the type most commonly installed on Australian roofs. They range from 250 to 285 watts and have efficiencies from 15.4% to 17.5%.

Renesola’s Double Glass Panel

Renesola produces a standard sized, 60 cell, double glass module with a 10 year product warranty and a 30 year performance warranty. But as it is a 1,500 volt panel it is not suitable for normal household installation and is made for large commercial rooftop solar installations.

Renesola’s Future

In March 2016 Sinovoltaics gave Renesola an Altman Z-score of 0.23.  This is a measure of the financial health of a company and their low score led me to conclude they were in dire financial straits.  Renesolar has confirmed this by pointing me towards this article by Macroaxis which, on the 16th of February 2017, gave Renesola's chance of bankruptcy over the next two financial years as 40%.  But Renesola would like me to point out the analysis gives many other solar manufacturers an even greater chance of bankruptcy. 

On the bright side, Macroaxis defines bankruptcy as:

"Financial Distress as an operational condition where a company is having difficulty to meet its current financial obligations towards its creditors or to deliver on the expectations of its investors."

Which is a situation a company can survive, although it does make me wonder why they just didn't just call it financial distress in the first place. 

My Recommendation

Renesola produces tier one panels and so I would expect them to be reliable and unlikely to fail over the next two to three decades. While it is possible Renesola won't be around in the future to honor their warranties because of its current financial difficulties, because their panels are reliable the chance of a household needing to make a warranty claim in the first place should be small.