You can find a more in depth comparison of mono vs poly solar panel here.
Mono vs poly solar panels shading.
Advantages of mono solar panels.
Monocrystalline solar cells are more efficient because they are cut from a single source of silicon.
The older of the two mono panels are the most developed type of photovoltaic panel cells.
Mono panels are the most efficient since they re made with high quality silicon.
Most panels these days have bypass diodes to help with partial shading so you don t looses all the output.
Monocrystalline solar panels have solar cells made from a single crystal of silicon while polycrystalline solar panels have solar cells made from many silicon fragments melted together.
This silicon is then cooled and finally sliced into square wafers creating the polycrystalline shape.
Amorphous solar panels.
Thin amorphous film panel output is supposed to increase with age and heat where as output on mono poly crystalline panels loose some output with heat and time.
N type cells are more resistant to light induced degradation than p type cells.
When solar pv first boomed in australia in 2009 2010 monocrystalline solar panels were thought to be superior to polycrystalline solar panels.
Mono solar cell panels have a typical efficiency of around 15 at the 25 c mark which drops at 50 c by around 12 15.
A mono solar panel is made with high quality silicon manufactured with intricate patterns across the surface making them easy to differentiate from poly solar panels.
In other words you would need less monocrystalline solar panels in your solar power system to generate the same amount of power that say a greater number of polycrystalline solar panels would.
Polycrystalline solar cells are blended from multiple silicon sources and are slightly less efficient.
See an example of monocrystalline cells below.
They typically perform better than polycrystalline alternatives albeit by a small amount.
So monocrystalline solar panels will usually have a higher power output rating than either polycrystalline or thin film modules.
The main difference between the two technologies is the type of silicon solar cell they use.
So that briefly covers monocrystalline vs polycrystalline.
Polycrystalline silicon solar panels polycrystalline are also known as multi crystalline solar panels and unlike monocrystalline solar panels the melted silicon to produce them is poured into a square mould.
There were a number of reasons for this thinking.
Crystalline panels do not perform as well in partial shading compared to amorphous cells and they do gradually lose a small percentage of output as the temperature rises above 25 c.
It is mainly used in large scale commercial applications.