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Old 07-16-13, 06:16 AM   #46
MN Renovator
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ELGo View Post
One last comment about PV adventures ...

I was much more gung ho about PV until I started reading about very premature PV panel death from the cheap Chinese manufacturers. I expect this to be a growing pain transition kind of thing, but for now I personally would only consider panels from European or American manufacturers. That raises the cost per watt for the panel to well over $3.
I've talked to a few solar installers and based on what they say, some cheap Chinese manufacturers are using reject third market cells. Basically the cells get rejected by one manufacturer, go to the next and those cells get rejected and they go to a third manufacturer and generally you get junk in the end. I'm sure there might be a few Chinese manufacturers that are good but you'd have to do research on their track record to figure it out. IMHO you can get good UL listed solar PV at a decent price(sub $1/watt before shipping) from a good manufacturer without resorting to Chinese panels. When you figure how much the inverter, racking, installation, permitting, etc costs it isn't worth putting questionable panels up. I don't think you need to be spending $3/watt though.
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