There are a lot of panel options out there on the market - there performance and specifications don't need to be learned by everyone - that's for your installer / sales person to know. But I feel it is important that people know what options are out there. Yes, I used thin film flexible on my roof, not because they were the most efficient, but because they were easy to install, I had more than enough room on my roof and they had a Miami-Dade County NOA for hurricane ratings - no engineering needed.

However, one of my favorite panels these days which have not yet become commonplace are bi-facial panels - this is basically a panel where the wafers are sandwiched between two layers of glass but there is no need for a backing so that the wafers kind of hover inside the panel frame allowing light to come through. What makes them "bi-facial" is that the wafers absorb the reflected light from the other side of the panel too boosting their efficiency. I could go into a more technical explanation, but the whole idea here is keep it simple so that we all understand the application and their usefulness. So - a photo being worth a thousand words... check this out.



Very cool, great integration into the built environment - using the panels to help create a shaded area for the deck, allows light to sprinkle through...

Note : I don't think the Hong Kong School that I wrote about earlier uses bi-facial technology, I think they're just regular wafers custom designed to "float" between the layers of glass... for the photo you can see that the wafers are staggered in places to give it a more "artful" effect...