What's the difference between Amorphous, Monocrystalline and Polycrystalline solar panels? Are amorphous panels really better in subdued light? How can you tell mono and polycrystalline apart? Which type responds better to shading? Find out in this video.
By Julian
Youtuber, shed dweller, solar charge controller aficionado
You're too close, we don't see anything.
Its best to have both types of panels. amorphous for early morning and late sun in the evenings. Mono throughout the day but with overcast the amorphous can compensate for the mono loss so with both you more consistency. They now make amorphous in a darker color but efficiency is lagging still.
I am still looking for them to create a rubber lining like pond liner with those aramorphus hippodihop panels glued on it. So I can cover my roof watertight create a 2inch pond on the roof so the panels an the roof get cooled by the water.
Gallium arsenide and graphene are much more efficient, can use more infrared which is always available.
Ahh Julian. I didn't realise you had a video on this.
Do you think that it's crazy that so many people have mono and poly fixed to their home installs in Northern Europe?
An Amorphous can generate power from dusk till dawn in partial shade in less than ideal alignment in overcast conditions in all seasons. Where mono and poly only work well when close to perfectly aligned to the sun and only in full sun?
Listening to you dissing the Amorphous right now i am very surprised. Have you thought about how many hours of the day you will get over 50% of the power from the panel on average compared to the others. And considered the average installation which is a fixed angle and fixed compass setting in a generally overcast country with trees and other houses sometimes crowding the panels?
For me, personally it's a no brainer unless you are tracking the sun in a sunny country, live at the equator or unless you just want a token panel because you are short on space.
Would you reconsider your view on Amorphous considering how most people in the northern hemisphere have their installations?
I would love to see a real world test between the three over the year using an average northern hemisphere home setup.
i bought a harbor freight 100w solar kit because it was on sale and i also had a 20% off coupon, so i bought it for a really good price and i had always wanted to test one out for my own curiosity. other than the fact that the panels are huge and don't have metal frames, in full sunlight pointed at the sun they do produce between 102 and 109 watts. after experimenting and comparing them to 100 watt mono panels i believe that the amorphous panels perform better than the mono panel in low light conditions simply because the amorphous panels have more surface area than the relatively small 100w mono panel. but 3 100w mono panels would easily perform the same in low light conditions and would use the same amount of space while also having superior full-sunlight performance. so personally i wouldn't buy amorphous panels unless they are inexpensive and have the real estate to mount them. mono panels are so inexpensive now that you can assemble a 200 watt system for the same price as the harbor freight system.
How about Backing up your opinion with true data. show us what your amp meter.says
Amorphous panels are far less space-efficient as far as rated output goes, but they are relatively much more efficient at producing power on overcast days. I've seen my 45W set of amorphous panels charging a deep cycle battery even when it's overcast and raining. My 280W polycrystalline panel doesn't produce anything useful under those conditions.
Julian Ilett
Hi Julian, thanks for all your great videos on this subject and the arduino!
I am currently looking into this subject because I will soon be buying a solar system to power my home, completely off grid.
I have also read that silicon amorphous "should" produce more power throughout the day than a similar sized mono or poly crystalline panel because "in theory" it will produce more electricity at dusk and dawn. I cant find any real world comparisons, just peoples opinions with no data to back up their speculation.
Seeing as you have all three types of panels and logging the amount of electricity produced throughout a certain period of time shouldn’t be too hard to do, it would be very interesting if you could give us some real world data on how much each of these panels produce under the same conditions.
This would give us some practical information to work on and would get us out of the world of marketing hype and personal opinions.
I would be very grateful if you had any information of this sort or if you would be willing to do such an experiment seeing as you already have all the equipment.
thanks again!
iv got 1 of those long maplin solar panels plus the 1 under it the smaller 1 but i dont get much out of it the 12w i think is only enuf to power a hair dryer 24v motor at 20v to cool my kitchen down the other 1 has a chip
I've heard that the Amorphus don't last as long. Is that true to your knowledge?
Thanks.
amorphous seems like it'd be good RVs, busses and the like, or whenever you can't help but to have a panel partially shaded for part of the day
oh wait i think i had that happen on one of my videos, I never knew about it how does it know to "turn on" it seems rare yet unbelievably annoying
That was YouTube's image stabilization feature! But I've used it again recently and it seems much better.