Mono Panels VS Poly Panels Advantage. What Is It ?

Hi,

Amorphous panels do best in low light, but the trade off is 5 times as many square feet are needed for the same output.

Poly apparently in real life testing do better than mono in difficult lighting conditions.

My solar upgrade will be high voltage poly, with an MPPT controller when it happens.

Tech changes so my observations of my older panels may be outdated. That said my 230w poly kicks my 220w mono's butt in bright light and dim.

I pull 15a off of the poly and 12a off of the mono in bright light.

Drop the light levels and the mono's voltage drops fast, too the point it's useless. The poly produces at first light before the sun comes up, in clouds so thick you don't know where the sun is and even pointed away from the sun.

Living in "Sunny Colorado" you would think mono would be better. Last year most days were morning sun and afternoon clouds. The poly did well in the clouds, the mono would of had me on the generator.

Since I go by Isc for PWM, the better deal would be measured in dollars per Isc amp, NOT by dollars per watt.

I don't know anything about mono vs poly for cloudy days, but do notice how some monos have lower Isc than same wattage poly. IMO ignore whether mono or poly and just look at Isc.

Efficiency doesn't matter unless you have limited space for the panel.

We camp in a similar situation/way and through a serendipitous screw-up on my part I bought a 66 cell 185W high voltage panel intended for a grid tie system that typically puts out more than 38V at the controller. this required the use of a Morningstar MPPT controller which will convert the higher voltage to usable current. What this means in reality is that even in shaded camp sites we have some power coming. the big problem with "12V" panels is that any shading gets them below the point where they can put current into your battery. My panel will put out 17V under a full moon.
We spent 8 days on the north shore of Lake Superior in a camp site with maybe one hour of direct sun on the panel and at the end of 8 days we were at 64% SOC. The tear is set up for serious boondocking with all LED lights and we do not use any large draw appliances i.e. a french press substitutes for the coffee maker. But we do have a TV/DVD and XM radio, and the big power user is a 12V WAECO refrigerator (size and form factor of a large ice chest).