We are continuing our series of articles on lowest prices per watt for solar photovoltaic panels where every time we have changes in the price ranking we will publish a new article with corresponding date in the title.
We list the cheapest panels dollar per watt that we can find on the internet and through direct research. We also include listings of products our readers submit to us through the Contact Us form or in the comments. Representatives of the different vendors are welcome to submit info about their products too. Very differently from other “cheapest solar panels lists” out there we will not charge you for that and we will not tell you the list is already full – yep, this is what some publishers of lowest prices in solar have told some of the vendors of realistically the cheapest panels in certain sizes. Yeah, we had a good laugh listening to the story of one of the vendors here trying to get listed with a web page claiming to be a free survey of the lowest prices. While these vendors were not allowed to be listed their after being asked for money and told that the list is full already there are companies on their list that are listed twice.
We do not claim at all that these are research and results of an absolute character. That is, we realize that there might be products, vendors, pricing structures for certain types of projects and quantities that we are not able to identify through our effort.
That is why nobody should get offended that their product brand or vendor company is not included in our research or they are not ranked correctly because we have not found out about their lowest, low or otherwise competitive prices.
While we maintain that prices as dollar per Watt ($/Wp, dollar per Watt peak) is the number that will take the solar power industry to the stage of playing a major role of resolving the gigantic issues the US and the world have with securing clean, safe and abundant source of energy, we also realize that with many products groups prices reflect many other things than just willingness of the manufactures and the marketers to provide an affordable product.
Namely, different prices may reflect different quality and quality preference of the market – i.e. higher quality products may maintain relatively higher prices given all other factors being equal.
Different prices may reflect different costs to manufacture products of certain type of technology. We are well aware that this is especially true with solar panels. We will try, as effort grows to provide a way for our readers to be able to separate prices listed and researched for different underlying technologies of products.
In this edition of the lowest prices article for example we are separating in different tables the three most popular commercially available cell technologies on which solar photovoltaic modules are based: monocrystalline, polycrystalline and thin-film. That should make it very easy for our readers to get to useful information about the competitors in the different technologies. Also it will give a chance for a vendor who offers a good price in one technology to not to be shadowed by a vendor with low price in the other technology.
We also have tried to include more sizes, that is make the list much longer in order to give chance for vendors that are not necessarily with the lowest price to show in the study. One thing you can expect in future editions is to see the lists broken down in different size ranges which should give even better chance for vendors to appear in their area of strength.
In any case if any reader, buyer or seller of solar products thinks that our best research effort has not presented certain vendors, brand or price – please, feel free to contact us and forward to us details of the the product and price you think we should list. We will add additional level to research to verify that such price is being offered on regular basis and will try to reflect this in our report.
The reason we believe prices in dollar per watt peak with solar photovoltaic modules is so critical for this industry to take off as a major player in resolving the energy issues the world has created for itself is that such price is a major factor in the economic efficiency of a solar power installation. See our article Economics of Solar Power on this.
Have in mind in addition to the very sharply falling prices of solar modules what else is driving the further acceptance of this clean energy technology is the government incentives programs that exist in different places in the world including incentives on federal level in the US in the form of a 30% tax credit on total installation costs and other different state level subsidies and feed in tariffs.
Here is or current ranking:
Monocrystalline
($/Wp, $ per module, Wp of the module, technology, Model, Brand,Vendor, URL to the vendor’s page)
$2.25 / Wp, $416.25, 185W, Mono-crystalline, SMD185M, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com
$2.25 / Wp, $405.00, 180W, Mono-crystalline, SMD180M, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com
$2.25 / Wp, $540.00, 240W, Mono-crystalline, SMD240M, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com (sizes over 190W from SolarMaxDirect.com are not UL listed)
(SolarMaxDirect’s prices for less than a container size of order are $2.70)
$3.20 / Wp, $544.00, 170W, Mono-crystalline, DMSOLAR 170 MONO, BrightWatts, DmSolar, http://www.dmsolar.com
$3.40 / Wp, $594.41, 175W, Mono-crystalline, NT-175U, Sharp, Infinigi, http://www.infinigi.com
$3.57 / Wp, $625.00, 175W, Mono-crystalline, SW175, Solar World, Backwoods Solar, http://www.backwoodssolar.com
Polycrystalline
($/Wp, $ per module, Wp of the module, technology, Model, Brand, Vendor, URL to the vendor’s page)
$2.25 / Wp, $427.50, 190W, Poly-crystalline, SMD190P, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com
$2.25 / Wp, $416.25, 185W, Poly-crystalline, SMD185P, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com
$2.25 / Wp, $405.00, 180W, Poly-crystalline, SMD180P, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com
$2.25 / Wp, $393.75, 175W, Poly-crystalline, SMD175P, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com
$2.25 / Wp, $382.50, 170W, Poly-crystalline, SMD170P, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com
(sizes over 190W from SolarMaxDirect.com are not UL listed)
(SolarMaxDirect’s prices for less than a container size of order are $2.70)
$2.43 / Wp, $509.97, 210W, Poly-crystalline, REC210AE, REC, The Solar Biz, http://www.thesolarbiz.com
$2.43 / Wp, $533.97, 220W, Poly-crystalline, REC220AE, REC, The Solar Biz, http://www.thesolarbiz.com
$2.43 / Wp, $424.97, 175W, Poly-crystalline, BP 175B, BP Solar, The Solar Biz, http://www.thesolarbiz.com
$2.44 / Wp, $549.00, 225W, Poly-crystalline, REC EA US 225, REC, Sun Electronics, http://sunelec.com
$2.54 / Wp, $558.00, 220W, Poly-crystalline, REC EA US 220, REC, Sun Electronics, http://sunelec.com
$2.59 / Wp, $543.90, 210W, Poly-crystalline, REC210AE, REC, BeyondOilSolar, http://www.beyondoilsolar.com
(many REC sizes from BeyondOilSolar are at this price)
$2.60 / Wp, $312.00, 120W, Poly-crystalline, DMSOLAR 120 POLY, BrightWatts, DmSolar, http://www.dmsolar.com
$2.68 / Wp, $522.60, 195W, Poly-crystalline, ES-A-195-fa3b, Evergreen, Sun Electronics, http://sunelec.com
$2.89 / Wp, $635.80, 220W, Poly-crystalline, SCHOTT POLY 220, Schott, Affordable Solar, http://www.affordable-solar.com
$2.99 / Wp, $523.25, 175W, Poly-crystalline, PV-UD175MF5, Mitsubishi Solar, Affordable Solar, http://www.affordable-solar.com
Thin-film
($/Wp, $ per module, Wp of the module, technology, Model, Brand,Vendor, URL to the vendor’s page)
$3.87 / Wp, $232, 60W, Thin-film, Kaneka, GSA-60, Living Off The Grid, http://livingoffthegrid.ecrater.com
$3.97 / Wp, $237.98W, Thin-film, Kaneka, GSA-60, Green Box Usa, http://www.greenboxusa.com
Feel free to send suggestions through comments on our articles or the Contact Us page.
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