The list:

• Solar power helps replace the use of coal for electricity – a major contributor to air and water pollution.
• Helps replace the use of oil for electricity and motion (transportation). Oil is not only a major pollutant (before and after usage) but costs the nation dollars going to benefit regions and nation not exactly friendly to us. I.e. using solar should be a strategic security priority.
• Reduce dependency on imported energy fuels (oil). This has to do with the previous point but underlines the dependency part as opposed to the the economic ones (importing oil for spending dollars).
• Help rural and otherwise economically disadvantaged areas bring opportunities to generate income or reduce outgoing expenditures. Such areas, by implementing solar, can either reduce amount dollars out-flowing to bring services (electric power) and, or bring income by generating power and exporting it to other regions (urban).
• Solar energy almost in the whole value chain is or can be local (national or regional). This is especially true for the part after basic components manufacturing (which specific part can be import). Installation, design and planning effort can be local and is very difficult to outsource. This is a factor to having an industry that is specifically local and specifically capable to produce local employment. The local employment in such industry promotes education in new technology and makes communities more self dependent.

The web site allows a search based on different parameters of the solar panels including power, voltages, currents, efficiency.

Efficiency of solar panels is  important data about the components that is always researched by photovoltaic components buyers but the only way till now to research it is to go panel by panel and open their datasheets. The PVbin.com database displays the efficiency reading for all panels in the search results and can sort the panels by the most efficient one.

After searching / filtering on certain criteria the user can click on a link to the page of a particular panel model and checkout more detailed data about the panel.

Support this free to use solar panels database by visiting it.

Welcome Back, Pittsburgh: FLABEG Brings 200 Green Solar Jobs to … by Tina Casey
FLABEG, the global specialty glass manufacturer, has just opened a solar mirror factory by Pittsburgh International Airport that will bring an estimated 200 jobs to the region, and perhaps as many as 300. …

Greentech Media: GridPoint Gets Into Solar Integration With SMUD … by info@greentechmedia.com
SMUD will be installing energy storage devices, solar panel inverter systems and “consumer control concepts in a residential solar community in Rancho Cordova, Calif.,” GridPoint said. Everything will be linked with the utility’s smart …

An Affordable Free Span Solar System by Preston Koerner
P4P Energy, LLC — short for Power for the Planet — recently completed the installation of its first, cable-suspended free span solar system in the parking lot of the headquarters…

At opening of Florida solar-energy facility, President Obama …30 Oct 2009 by Consumer Reports Home & Garden Blog
On Tuesday, President Barack Obama promoted the smart grid and renewable energy at the opening of Florida Power & Light’s DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center (shown). The facility consists of more than 90500 solar panels, …

Morocco to undertake $9 billion solar energy project …
Morocco is going to be the next country to undertake an ambitious solar project. Theirs is slated to be worth $9 billion and is anticipated to produce 38% of the country’s installed power generation by 2020. According to Reuters.com, …

Denver’s solar zoning | eLetters by DP Opinion
Denver’s solar zoning : eLetters features The Denver Post’s letters to the editor on select articles. Colorado.

Europe’s Plan to Draw Solar Power From the Sahara Moves Ahead …2 Nov 2009 by Eliza Strickland
Environment | When European Union officials first discussed the idea of a massive solar power plant in the Sahara to provide power to all of Europe, many people took it as a.

The prices of solar photovoltaic panels has fallen dramatically in recent months. News about manufactures starting to feel oversupply of production despite the growing activity in solar power plant construction has made many of them lower prices of modules that are commercially available.

While there are rumors and constant news reports about companies especially in the newest of the photovoltaic technologies trying to deal with the $1 per watt barrier the panels that are available commercially are still above $2 per watt peak. By commercially available we mean a purchaser fro a solar power project can pick up a phone a order them with at most a month to two months lead time for delivery, including possible production lead time for orders above a couple of tens of kilowatt (kW).

Recently SolarMaxDirect.com has lowered prices for large orders to $2.25 per watt peak.

With the 30% federal tax credit available for US projects the realistic cost in the project for panels is just $1.575. Having in mind the tax credit can be applied to all the costs for the project currently more than ever investing in solar power is economically efficient.

In addition to the federal tax credit many states offer a direct rebate on certain equipment up to a couple of dollar per watt and also many states offer special feed-in-tariffs (FITs) for the electricity produced by solar power installations.

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 or 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, nominal voltage, technology, Brand, Model, Vendor, URL to the vendor’s page)

$3.15 / Wp, $630, 200W, 43.60V, Mono-crystalline, SMD200M, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com

$3.30 / Wp, $726, 220W, 45.2V, Mono-crystalline, SMD220M, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com

$3.30 / Wp, $610.50, 185W, 36V, Mono-crystalline, SMD185M, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com

$5.03 / Wp, $1,005.00, 200W, 42V, Mono-crystalline, HIT-200BA19, Sanyo, atlE Store, http://store.altenergystore.com

$5.16 / Wp, $1,032, 200W, 55.8V, Mono-crystalline, HIP-200BA19, Sanyo, Affordable Solar Group LLC, http://www.affordable-solar.com

$5.52 / Wp, $552, 100W, 18V, Mono-crystalline, SW100C, Sunwize, atlE Store, http://store.altenergystore.com

Polycrystalline

($/Wp, $ per module, Wp of the module, nominal voltage, technology, Brand, Model, Vendor, URL to the vendor’s page)

$2.95 / Wp, $516.25, 175W, 24.2V, Poly-crystalline, SMD175P, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com

$3.30 / Wp, $445.50, 135W, 20.6V, Poly-crystalline, SMD135P, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com

$3.30 / Wp, $594.00, 180W, 24.2V, Poly-crystalline, SMD180P, SolarMaxDirect, SolarMaxDirect.com, http://SolarMaxDirect.com

$3.54 / Wp, $637, 180W, 24V, Poly-crystalline, CSI ECOSENSE CS6P-180, Canadian Solar, Affordable Solar Group LLC, http://www.affordable-solar.com

$3.56 / Wp, $142.49, 40W, 17.3V, Poly-crystalline, BP Solar, Discount Sales Electronics, http://discountsales.com

$3.94 / Wp, $630, 160W, 24.9V, Poly-crystalline, ES-160-A, Evergreen Solar, KULLY Solar, http://kullysolar.com

$4.62 / Wp, $1,016, 220W, 28.7V, Poly-crystalline, SCM220, REC Solar, Affordable Solar Group LLC, http://www.affordable-solar.com

$5.48 / Wp, $328.88, 60W, 12V, Poly-crystalline, CD Tech Solar, RV Fun Products, http://www.rvfunproducts.com

Thin-film

($/Wp, $ per module, Wp of the module, nominal voltage, technology, Brand, Model, Vendor, URL to the vendor’s page)

$3.83 / Wp, $230, 60W, 67V, Thin-film, Kaneka, GSA-60, Living Off The Grid, http://livingoffthegrid.ecrater.com

Feel free to send suggestions through comments on our articles or the Contact Us page.

Related articles on the web:

Wall Street Journal – Applying Moore’s Law To Solar

Chicago Tribune – ?xelon plans to build solar power plant on Chicago’s South Side

Barron’s Blogs – Solar: Citi Says Installers See 10%-25% Module Price Cut

Cleantech Group – The REAL story on Moore’s Law & solar

t r u t h o u t – Exelon Plans to Build Solar Power Plant

TG Daily – Texas to fund half billion solar project

My Dollar Plan – Solar Energy Tax Credit Details

Geek.com – Cost of solar-grade poly-silicon ingots decreasing rapidly …

SolarByTheWatt.com – Solar By The Watt

In the latest version of the Resources page we have interesting reference to information on UL listing of solar equipment.

SolarByTheWatt.com