Monocrystalline solar panel technology

Monocrystalline solar panel technology has long lived in the shadows of multicrystalline solar panel technology. Mono solar panels were regarded as more expensive though they were more efficient in terms of converting sunlight into electricity. The share of mono to multi was generally in the ratio of 1:9. Also the main players in the Monocrystalline solar panel technology were western solar panel companies such as Panasonic and Sunpower who had much higher cost structures. Even the Chinese companies which were primarily Monocrystalline solar panel technology focused had to sell panels at a higher price as the mono wafers were more expensive. However, the advent of Longi Silicon has entirely changed the dyanmics of the marketplace.

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Longi has sharply reduced the costs of the solar wafers using Monocrystalline solar panel technology even though their efficiency remains higher than the multicrystalline solar panel technology. This means that on a price efficiency basis, Monocrystalline solar panel technology is suddenly racing ahead of the multicrystalline solar panel technology. This also has been helped by the biggest market in the world China deciding to make higher efficiency cells and panels mandatory for its solar power installations.

While most silicon solar panel makers generally had a mix of both multicrystalline and Monocrystalline solar panel technology, their capacities for multicrystalline was much higher than Monocrystalline solar panel technology. Now some of them are being forced to change. Western solar panel company Solarworld has decided to fire 400 workers and focus only on Monocrystalline solar panel technology as it is no longer cost effective for the German company to producer multicrystalline solar panels. As it is, Solarworld had a much higher cost structure than the Chinese companies, now it was facing a double whammy from the technology side as well

GCL Technology which is the world’s largest producer of solar wafers with a massive 18 GW capacity has also decided to slowly venture into the Monocrystalline solar panel technology with a 1 GW capacity. The company is also going to convert its existing multicrystalline panel wafer production to diamond wafering which will reduce costs and improve efficiency for its multi wafers. GCL faces a big thread from Longi which already has a mono wafer capacity of 7 GW and plans 20 GW in the next couple of years.