While most solar panels have similar features such as a 25-year warranty and will survive a hailstorm, it’s important to take a deeper look to see which solar panel is the “best”. By focusing on the manufacturer’s stability, the differences in solar panel warranties, and the overall quality of the proposal, you can get the best solar panel for your home.
How Stable is the Solar Panel Manufacturer?
Imagine purchasing solar panels from a brand that goes bankrupt a few years later. Even with a 25-year warranty, you won’t get a replacement if the company is no longer in business. To ensure you’re making a wise investment, research the manufacturer’s stability.
One way to assess a manufacturer’s stability is to look at their financials and track record. Are they profitable and have they been around for a while? Do they have a good reputation in the industry? These factors can give you confidence that the manufacturer will be around to honor their warranties.
Of course, stability is not the only factor to consider when purchasing solar panels (cost and efficiency of solar panels are often considered as well) but it is a critical one. By ensuring the manufacturer is stable, you can feel confident that they will be around long enough to honor any warranty claims if needed.
Production vs. Product Warranties
It’s crucial to ensure the manufacturer offers both a 25-year product warranty and a production warranty. Most solar panels come with a 25-year production guarantee, but this is typically pro-rated. If a panel fails in year 12, you might only get a check for about half the value of the solar panel.
The product warranty ensures coverage for defects for the full 25 years. Lower-cost panels often have shorter product warranties (10-15 years), while more expensive panels typically offer 25-year product warranties. This makes a significant difference in long-term reliability and peace of mind.
Are High-Efficiency Panels Better?
If money is no object, high-efficiency panels are awesome. However, for most of us, they might not be the practical choice. If you have ample roof space, there’s no need to demand the highest efficiency panels unless you’re prepared to pay top dollar. For more power, aim for the largest system you can get in terms of kilowatts.
For the best performing solar panels, what really matters is low degradation. A high-efficiency 400W panel is still just a 400W panel, but if it has low degradation, it will produce much more energy over its lifetime. Panels with lower degradation rates maintain their output more effectively, providing better long-term value.
I’m going to plug REC panels here, because they tend to check all the boxes for us. They are by no-means the only high-quality option, but they have amazing real-world performance & degredation, and also have a significantly lower failure rate than most solar panels. Ok, I’m done now.

How Can I Get the Best Solar System?
The best solar system is one that meets your budget, and is built to last. While we emphasize high-quality solar panels a lot at Virtue, the overall quality of solar panels tends to be high, even from many “cheaper” manufacturers. From my experience installing solar for over a decade, I would be much more concerned with the type of inverter installed, the responsiveness and service record of the installation company, and the system’s overall cost. Panel failures are relatively rare, but failures in electronics (inverters) are much more prevalant. A quick tour of reddit will turn up a lot of horror stories, and at the end you’ll probably decide that Enphase is the way to go. Agreed, although for ground-mounted systems, a solid string inverter like Fronius, or the Tesla Powerwall 3 are great options too.
At Virtue Solar, we don’t take chances on panels that are brand-new to the market, but we’ve been impressed with the build quality of some more affordable companies and disappointed with some “premium” models. For a thorough guide on how to get the best solar system, check out our article on how to compare solar quotes.
Solar Panel Shortages and New Manufacturers
During the pandemic, global supply shortages led to a surge of new solar panel manufacturers entering the market. Like many other companies, we found it near-impossible to get panels from our usual manufactures. This has led to the rise of lots of new companies trying to take advantage of this opening in the industry.
While some of these companies may offer solar panels with similar specs, they do not have the track record or experience of some of the larger manufacturers. This makes it hard to gauge the quality of those products, because they haven’t been around long enough to tell how reliable they are. They may in time prove to be great products, but with such a large investment, you may not want to be the test-case. There are also many “solar brands” that do not make their own panels– similar to searching Amazon and seeing the same gadget branded 5 different ways, many of the more budget, or commodity panels are the same panel rebranded, with the exact same design & specs.