Maxeon Solar Technologies has released its new Maxeon Air technology platform.
The company said the platform enables it to produce frameless, thin, lightweight and conformable solar panels with efficiency and performance ratings that are equivalent to standard solar panels. The platform is the result of five years of research, development and testing.
Maxeon said its new Air solar panels can be adhered directly to rooftops without the need for racking or other mounting systems. Because of their adhesive, lightweight nature, the technology will initially target installations on rooftops that are not engineered to support the weight of conventional solar systems. In Europe, where Maxeon Air will first launch, the company estimated an unserved annual market for low-load roofs of more than 4 GW.
The Air panels do not use metal frames and contain no glass, resulting in an install load of roughly 6 kg/m². The product essentially appears to be a solar panel sticker, with Maxeon saying that the integrated adhesive layer enables installation directly on the roof surface, without racking, anchors, or ballast. This will enable installation on uneven rooftops.
The company said that the cells within the panels include a solid metal foundation, along with stress-relieved cell interconnects. It said these will protect against corrosion and enable fault-tolerant circuits that allow energy flow, even with cracked cells. Additionally, the panels feature an efficiency rating of 20.9%, a low power-temperature coefficient, shade tolerance, wide spectral response, and hot-spot resistance.
The product will become widely available in the first quarter of 2022.
