Which solar panels are the cheapest? Where can you get the cheapest panels for your solar project? Our table shows you which solar panels are the cheapest right now.

Many other documents purport to share the list of the cheapest solar panels, when they actually have a list that is incredibly outdated, showing panels that cost more than $1 per watt. There’s no way that $1 per watt is still considered cheap. That’s very high by today’s standards.

Of course, solar panels are no longer the largest cost of installation. The more expensive items are the other components that make up a solar panel system, like inverters and the electrical equipment. Having knowledge of electricity is also critically important to installing a solar system.

Note: Solar panel technology is quickly improving, and we hope this trend continues. So the prices that are valid today might not be available in a few years, or even a few weeks, as new technologies become available and large panel orders are placed.

What makes solar panels cheaper?

The biggest factor in dropping solar panel prices is reduced manufacturing cost through more efficient technology. As each individual solar cell becomes more efficient, it is possible to create a panel with a higher wattage for the same amount of material. Improvements in manufacturing efficiency and expected panel longevity are also major factors in the cost of panels.

How the panel is manufactured is important. For example, single-crystal vs poly-crystal cells have wide difference in price. New technologies are also rapidly being developed, including a thin-film solar technology.

What are the most exciting new solar technologies?

Light sensitive nano-particles are a promising field of research into collecting electricity from the sun.

Researchers have been studying methods of improving the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of solar cells for a long time. Your standard solar PV array is comprised of hundreds, and sometimes thousands of solar cells, that individually convert real sun light into electrical currents (through absorption of photons and UV rays). The average solar cell is approximately 15-20% efficient, which means 80+% of the sunlight that hits them does not get converted into electricity. As such, scientists have constantly been experimenting with new technologies to boost this light capture and conversion.

Light-Sensitive Nanoparticles. Recently, a group of scientists at the University of Toronto unveiled a new type of light-sensitive nanoparticle technology called “colloidal quantum dots”. They believe it will offer a less expensive and more flexible material for solar cells, making manufacture far cheaper.

Specifically, the new materials use n-type and p-type semiconductors – but ones that can actually function outdoors. This is a unique discovery since previous designs weren’t capable of functioning outdoors and therefore not practical applications for collecting solar energy. University of Toronto researchers discovered that n-type materials bind to oxygen – the new colloidal quantum dots don’t bind to air and therefore can maintain their stability outside. This helps increase radiant light absorption. Panels using this new technology were found to be up to eight percent more efficient at converting sunlight, which is a remarkable breakthrough.