Solar Panel Sizes and What you Should Know
As solar PV has become mainstream over the past 30 years, improvements in technology have led to tremendous gains in the power a solar panel can produce. During that time, solar panels’ dimensions haven’t increased all that much despite gains of over 7x in a panel’s power output. This speaks to the facts that:
- Solar panels are a collections of PV cells, a solar panel’s power output is determined by:
- How many PV cells the panel contains
- The efficiency of those PV cells
- A solar panel’s dimensions are determined by:
- How many PV cells the panel contains
- The size of the silicon wafers used in those cells
How Panels Sizes are Designated
Panels break down into 3 main categories
- Small – Early-generation solar panels ( 36 cells) are normally designated as “small”
- Standard – The 60 and 72 cell modules that have dominated the industry for the last decade are “standard” sized panels and most of what is available in the residential market
- Large and X-Large – Modules with more than 72 cells are designated as “large” or “extra large”
Why it Matters
The main benefit of understanding how solar panels sizes work is to help you differentiate the difference between solar proposals. Often times residential customers will pay a premium panel price because of a high production number on the panel without understanding they are buying a larger panel with lower production per cell.
