SunPower said Monday it will launch its highest-powered solar panel yet next spring.

The company said its 315-watt panel, SPR-315, will break the industry’s 300-watt power barrier. It will also be the most efficient panel available to date, said Julie Blunden, vice president of external affairs for SunPower.

Ninety-six cells will fill the panel, instead of the 72 that make up SunPower’s 220-watt panel, the current largest, Ms. Blunden said. The cells will also be able to convert 22 percent of sunlight into electricity, instead of 20 percent, Ms. Blunden said.

The panel, which SunPower will showcase at the Solar Power 2006 Conference & Expo in San Jose, is a big improvement over conventional 160-watt panels, she said.

“We will be offering installers 50 percent more power from 50 percent fewer panels,” she said. “For a 4-kilowatt AC system, instead of using 30 panels with the 160-watt module, or 20 to 21 panels with the 220-watt module, you would use 15. From an installer perspective that’s a great thing, because you need a lot less connections, and a lot less cabling, to install the system.”

A system that would require 410 square feet of roof space, using 160-watt panels, would need only 265 square feet using the SPR-315, the company said in a press statement.

But the main benefit is the money and time saved from reducing the amount of cabling and connectors needed to install the panels, because fewer panels would be needed, Ms. Blunden said.

“We see each of these things as being a step on the march toward mainstream solar power,” she said. “One side is equipment efficiency, but another is about how you make a panel easier to install and cheaper. We’re coming out with a panel that does both of those things combined.”

Metrics that Matter

Higher-efficiency cells and modules do bring down the cost per watt, an important component of the total cost of a solar-powered system. At a conference several months ago, Zhengrong Shi, chief executive of Suntech Power, said that cost per watt is the only metric that matters.

But others say more work needs to be done outside of the cell. At the California Clean Tech Open in September, Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla said much of the cost is outside of the cells (see Khosla: Ethanol Not Final Fuel).

And a study that Topline Strategies and Sunlight Electric plan to release at the end of the month finds that the solar industry needs to focus on the non-materials costs, such as installation, financing, and insurance.

del.icio.us

Digg this

Slash it