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Big panels premium and where are the Q Cells 580's?

hwy17

hwy17

Anti-Solar Enthusiast
Joined
Nov 11, 2022
Messages
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Location
Santa Cruz, California
I don't understand what's holding large bifacial panels stubbornly above $.40 in the US. Bifacial panels are tariff exempt right?

400w's are available for $.25

Do the larger format panels not fit will in a shipping container or something? Is there large volume demand for them coming from another sector like utility scale solar that is keeping retail almost totally squeezed out with their large volume and long term contract negotiating power?

And where are the Q Cells 580's they have supposedly been in production for over a year now but they're not on the market. Solar farms bought up 100% of the supply?

I thought there was a constriction that would work itself out by now, but I guess bigger fish are making the same calculation I am: The ground mounting is the real expensive part, buy bigger panels to maximize the value of it.
 
Or maybe big importers are spooked by Xinjiang supply contamination in the Q Cells bifacials and that the construction is that only smaller players are willing to risk the attention of bringing them in anyway?
 
hwy17 said:
I don't understand what's holding large bifacial panels stubbornly above $.40 in the US. Bifacial panels are tariff exempt right?

400w's are available for $.25

Do the larger format panels not fit will in a shipping container or something? Is there large volume demand for them coming from another sector like utility scale solar that is keeping retail almost totally squeezed out with their large volume and long term contract negotiating power?

And where are the Q Cells 580's they have supposedly been in production for over a year now but they're not on the market. Solar farms bought up 100% of the supply?

I thought there was a constriction that would work itself out by now, but I guess bigger fish are making the same calculation I am: The ground mounting is the real expensive part, buy bigger panels to maximize the value of it.
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I think I read something about the jumbo panels being too big to deliver via lift gate. Every store seems to list either freight depot or local pickup only. So that would cut back on possible target market.
 
Brucey said:
I think I read something about the jumbo panels being too big to deliver via lift gate. Every store seems to list either freight depot or local pickup only. So that would cut back on possible target market.
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Ohh yeah good point. I picked mine up from a warehouse and they used a long fork forklift to put the long pallet in my cargo van.
 
In here they seem to dump these bigger industrial size panels cheap if just there's someone dumb enough to take the bait. I paid 0,36e/W over a year ago for my 700W Bluesun bifacials. It was cheap then. Now I can get their newer version of the same panels (better 23,5% efficiency, better bifaciality factor) for 0,19e/W delivered. Instead I got 15kWp monopanels (550W) about the same price as this time I'm going to install those on shed roof, so bifaciality isn't that important.

My bipanels are really big and heavy, but for my DIY installation they were perfect.
 
Branch Ranch said:
Local pick up only in CA.
Anyone have good/bad experience buying panels on ebay?
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If you're close enough to pick up I would not be concerned about buying those. Just inspect on pickup to see that they're not cracked front or back. Idk why grey market new panel sellers are a thing California but they are, there's some kind of niche for them.

But figure out your mounting plans first, 650 watt panels might do funny things like only fit 3 of them on a brightmount.
 
hwy17 said:
If you're close enough to pick up I would not be concerned about buying those. Just inspect on pickup to see that they're not cracked front or back. Idk why grey market new panel sellers are a thing California but they are, there's some kind of niche for them.

But figure out your mounting plans first, 650 watt panels might do funny things like only fit 3 of them on a brightmount.
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Maybe one or two.
 
We are going to stop carrying 550w panels. The pallets cannot be delivered on a standard liftgate, since the length of the pallet + pallet jack is longer than what fits on the common trucks. They are also very fragile - I don't think they will hold up as well as a 400w panel in a hail storm or similar because there just isn't enough aluminum in them for the span they run. There is a bell curve for sizes of panels that make sense and the 500+'s seem to be on the downhill side of the curve.

The only place I would use such large panels is if I were building a ground mount solar farm, was purchasing them by the container load and had the specialty equipment to deal with moving/racking them. You wouldn't ever find me trying to put one on a rooftop.
 
Also of somewhat related interest, when I purchased Kyocera KD315GX panels at that time they were considered large and they even put an aluminum brace across the middle back of the panel for extra structural support. That's also why I would be worried about these huge panels that don' even have that. They have to be a lot more fragile then the smaller panels especially when manufactures can't "waste" money on increased structural support when it's hard to convince customers to even look past the price per watt metric.
 
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