I haven't heard about anything quite as exciting as plug and play solar panels in quite a long time. The last time we heard about renewable energy that just 'plugs in' was the Jellyfish wind turbine. Sadly, it still isn't availabe yet (to my knowledge), but these new solar panels are!

A company called Andalay developed a solar panel that you can quite literally plug in to your home and be running a grid-tied system. There are no inverters, no expensive wiring, and they say that there are 70% less rooftop parts used in the assembly.

In the image at the left you can see what these panels look like installed on a roof. You'll notice that the space between the panels is quite a bit less than what you'd normally see. That's because these panels use a a sliding bracket system to mount the panels.

Enough about specifications, lets get in to how this can benefit you. The cheapest option in a renewable energy installation is a grid-tie installation because you don't need to dish out a lot of money for an expensive battery bank. The minimum installation for a grid-tie system includes at least 1 solar panel, mounting hardware, an inverter, and various tools/wire etc.

The problem with a grid-tie system is that although it's cheaper to install it's still important to get an inverter sized to what you want your capacity to be in the future. It's a waste of money to continually upgrade inverters.

What Andalay has done is introduced the micro-inverter. It's basically an inverter that is attached directly to the solar panel. That means quite a few things and they're all good.

Firstly, the panel is going to produce more power. DC (which is what solar panels and wind generators normally output) is a very inefficient way of transmitting energy. That's why we have AC powerlines. AC is highly efficient at transmitting power. Andalay is saying you might get 5% - 25% better performance simply because there is less power loss.

Secondly, the micro-inverter means that you can quite literally go out and buy a panel, mount it on your roof, plug it in and you're done. It's almost like buying an appliance and plugging it in.

Let's talk a bit about reliablility. Although they won't admit it, the amount of failure points has increased, although not in a bad way. Currently, if your inverter fails your whole system goes down until you replace it. With these new panels if an inverter fails the rest of the panels will continue to produce energy.

This also means that "if" one panel fails it's not going to cost as much to get the whole system up and running again.

Should you be worried about this the solar panels do come with a 12/25 year warranty for the panels and a 15 year warranty for the micro-inverters. That means you're not going to lose a lot of money should a panel fail within that time because it's covered under the warranty.

Each panel produces 175 watts and I haven't yet been able to find a price for them. I'll update when I do.

Currently, the only place that is selling the Andalay panels is Lowes in California, but in the near future they should be available for purchase by the rest of us.

Source: andalaysolar.com

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