What Are PERC Solar Panels?


A solar panel is a solar panel, right? Actually, that’s not quite true. There are actually many different types of solar panels on the market, including monocrystalline panels, polycrystalline panels, and PERC panels, with many other types of differentiations in between. It’s important to understand these different categories and their pros and cons so you can decide which type of panel is right for you. Keep reading to learn more about PERC panels and the benefits they provide.

What Is a PERC Panel?

PERC stands for Passive Emitter Rear Cell. While this can sound like an extremely complicated term, the breakdown of it is quite simple. PERC solar panels are a type of panel designed to enhance the absorption of sunlight and improve every solar cell’s efficiency. Once you understand a bit more about how they work, their name begins to make a lot more sense.

How They Work

PERC solar panels have the same layers of silicon cells sandwiched between glass that you would find in standard solar panels. However, they also feature an additional layer at the rear of the cell—the source of the “rear cell” part of their name. This layer is known as the passivation layer—where the “passive” part of the panel’s name comes from. The passivation layer is designed to reduce surface recombination, which is a process where electrons and holes recombine and lose their energy as heat. This reduces the cell’s efficiency. By passivating the rear surface of the cell, PERC panels minimize recombination loss, allowing more electrons to contribute to generating electricity, rather than being lost to heat.

Additionally, the passivation layer helps to redirect photons that would otherwise escape capture by solar cells. They reflect less light away from the panels, thereby maximizing the amount of sunlight that’s being converted to power. The passivated rear surface also creates a more favorable environment for electron flow within the cell, leading to higher current output.

What Are the Benefits?

With all of these features designed to improve the collection of photons and the efficiency of electron movement, you can likely guess the greatest benefit of PERC panels: greater efficiency. The combination of improved light absorption and reduced recombination losses allows PERC panels to achieve efficiency between 20% and 24%. While this may seem low, most other solar panels will range between 15% and 18%. That kind of improvement can help you recoup your costs on your solar installation much more quickly.

If you’re interested in learning more about PERC panels, look into Mission Solar Energy. They specialize in this type of solar panel and can offer more information.

Location: Texas, USA

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