Question: What do you reckon is the best Solar Panel for absorbing heat and getting the most energy?

Edward Bovill answered on 14 Mar 2013:

The Sun is an amazing power resource and we can extract power from sunlight in quite a few ways.

Solar panels don’t convert heat into electricity, they convert the light from the Sun into electricity. Currently the best solar panels are those made from single crystal silicon, and can be as much as 25% efficient (that means that of all the light energy falling onto them, 25% gets converted to electricity). There are fancier, more efficient types of solar panels used by NASA for spacecraft and these can reach 44% efficient. Unfortunately, these are incredibly expensive and aren’t available to the general public.

Solar heaters convert heat from the Sun into hot water for your home and there are some power plants that concentrate sunlight onto big tanks full of liquid, which then gets hot and is used to make electricity.