The Solar DIY Blog

http://www.solardave.com/index.php/does-akeena-solar-get-their-solar-panels-at-a-discount-video/
SolarDave: Does Akeena Solar Get Their Solar Panels at a Discount price for buying them in volume?

Eric Bowman: There are a lot of things that solar panel costs, volume, quality, there are a lot of components to it, we are the only solar intergrator that has developed our own propiritory panel so we outsource the manufacturing of that to SunTech which at the end of this year will be the largest manufacturer in the world.

They only make the Andalay solar panel for Akeena and Akeena only. It is our patent and our panel noboby can source the panel or install in the panel in the United States.

Because we are a very large solar intergator, one of the largest and we are publicly held and we are on the NASDAQ:AKNS because we only sell that one type of panel for that residentail application our volume is not like a Sharp or a BP that might sell to multiple brokers across the United States.

But we are extremely competitive when it comes to cost and value proposition, realiablity, aestecis and cost. Our clients get a win all the time.

Here is a small mock up of the Andalay panel the biggest difference you are going to see between the Andalay panel and any other panel in the past 30 years including everything that is being installed today, a traditional panel has aluminum racking and a non structural panel that sits on top of that, the wires are connected together and there is a perimeter ground system around that has to go around.

So what we have done for our clients over 2,000 installations in the last 5 years for residential systems they wanted something that looked a little bit better and had a higher reliability over time and what we have done it integrate the actual aluminum racking right in to the module, so the module is structural therfore you do not need any extra aluminum racking. What we have done is take this turn buckle in the top and other one in the bottom.

Then you take the other module and you snap it together you tighten up the turn buckle that draws the panels together so that provides only a 1/8″ gap. Now you have a structural connection at the top and at the bottom and you have redundant grounding which gives us less ground faults, and it looks a lot better and it sits flush with the roof. And it has been a big winner I would say everyone that has purchased this system in Colorado has done it either for the aesthetics or the reliability and it is one of the few non comonitized panels on the market.

Duration : 0:3:1

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