Below is an excerpt from MONEY INC's top 10 technological inventions of 2016. To read the full article click the link at the bottom of this post.

New High Efficiency Solar Panels

Buffalo, New York is the site of the new SolarCity factory where the company will be able to produce 10,000 solar panels each day. It will be one of the biggest in the world, and will transform the way solar panels are currently made. Using new technology, the solar panels will be high-efficiency. It is a risky move for the company because China currently produces conventional silicon-based solar panels very cheaply.

But Peter Rive, chief technology officer of SolarCity expects that the new panels will cost less and be so highly efficient that the residential market will embrace their product. In the past, the company has simply installed commercial use panels, but the opening of the Buffalo facility will create a vertically integrated new company, with manufacturing, providing and installing all within the same company.

Residential solar should become more popular as installed costs drop. The key technology making all these changes possible came from Silveo, which SolarCity purchased in 2014. The small company’s expertise uses elements of a thin-film cell, a layer of semiconductor oxide, and a standard crystalline-silicon solar cell. This design was originated by Martin Green, a 1970s solar power pioneer from Australia.

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