Elon Musk unveils cheap and efficient solar panel

Entrepreneur Elon Musk announced a solar panel during a presentation that is characterized by high efficiency and low costs. The panel developed will be the first to be used to complete the construction of a 1-gigawatt power plant and then be launched on the market.

Musk made the announcement as CEO of SolarCity, a company he co-founded with others. Reuters news agency reports that the announced solar panel has a measured conversion efficiency of 22.04 percent, as measured by the Renewable Energy Test Center. SolarCity claims that it has thus developed the most efficient solar panel in terms of cost per watt. These would be 15 to 20 cents lower than models that are currently used in practice; if true, this would mean a significant price drop in the cost of generating electricity.

SolarCity has plans to use the developed solar panel for its solar farm in the American city of Fremont. It currently has a generation capacity of 100 megawatts, but that should grow to 1 gigawatt in the coming years. When that project is completed, SolarCity wants to use the panels to install at third parties. This requires production to be increased to 10,000 panels per day, while panels from other companies will be used in the meantime. SolarCity is primarily a company that installs solar panels for customers.

A conversion efficiency of about 22 percent is more than most conventional solar panels, but more efficient solar panels have already been made. These are usually considerably more expensive than conventional models. The solar panel unveiled by Musk can also be made considerably more efficient, but this will probably also increase the costs.