Top ten solar PV panels rated by Freesource Energy April 2011

Our design team decided to get their heads together and give customers a heads up why we choose certain panels over others and come up with a top ten solar pv panel survey using information from some of the biggest names in the UK solar pv panel industry.

As a company Freesource have used lots of solar panels and regularly scan the market for innovation and technical information to make sure we are benchmarking our products against the best on offer. Freesource’ mantra is to give you the customer, “The Power of choice” and to do this we need to arm ourselves with information to help you do that.

The results from our solar panel survey are very interesting with Sharp coming out as number 1 and 2, beating Sanyo Hybrid panels  which arguably have a higher output being a hybrid panel. Why? You may ask, well the answer is simple, it all comes down to how you rate the importance of the features a product and it’s manufacturer bring and we have rated 13 of the best products in the market along the the following categories:

• Efficiency of cells
• Performance warranties
• Back up from the manufacturer
• Appearance (aesthetics)
• Weight of modules
• Availability of product
• Design flexibility
• Range of fixings supporting it
• Compatability with inverters
• Source of origin
• Ethics of suppliers
• Bypass diodes in situ

So, clearly, it is not all about just performance of cells. Why? You may ask again. The answer is simple, without the supporting features the module can have flaws and without backup the product can be made obsolete if it is hard to replace. Similarly, if your product is a rebadged chinese product or soley originating from 10,000 miles away, there are potential carbon and ethics issues some customers may not like. These are hard judgements to make as solar panels are on the whole reasonably reliable in most cases, but the support around them is crucial to making your investment safe and is often the flaw.

We are very confident we have created the right set of parameters to come up with the results for our top ten solar panel survey. If you were to choose Sharp modules you are making a safe long term investment and can sleep easy at night with no doubts or questions in your mind for 25 years. If you are interesting in hearing more about our top ten solar pv panel survey then please contact us via our website contact page and request more information and we will be happy to talk you through it. www.freesource.co.uk

We will be running the survey again in the summer so any further categories you wish us to look at please let us know and we will be happy to help.