Why a 20%-efficient solar panel can still be a great investment — and why "efficiency" and "capacity factor" are two completely different numbers that don't track each other.
It's a common gut reaction: "solar panels are only about 20% efficient — that seems low, why bother?" That reaction quietly conflates two numbers that measure entirely different things. One is a fixed property of the equipment. The other is a property of the site, the weather, and the clock. Mixing them up leads people to badly misjudge which renewable energy projects are actually good investments.