Goodbye to the idea that solar panels “die” after 25 years. A new study says the warranty does not mark the end, and performance can last for decades. Arrays built in the late 1980s still produced more than 80% of their original power. The long-term economics look better than many people believe.
Source: mafco
15 Comments
With solar plus the battery tech developments around cost and longevity, I’d almost consider considering moving to sunny AZ. But Nah.
No shit.
It’s just a wafer of silicon doped with a few strategic impurities. Silicon isn’t a short lived material. It makes up 28% of the earths crust
Solar power is power for life. Power forever
We picked up some almost free panels recently that are a decade old and I can’t see much of drop off in my non scientific but commercial electrician experience. The biggest difference is the output for the size, new panels are twice or more in the same footprint.
The issue with solar are the high voltage electronics needed to turn light into usable power. I have been looking at rooftop solar and the panels themselves may come with a 20 year guarantee all of the attached electronics might last 10 years and they are not cheap.
Not exactly news. There’s been a brisk trade in used panels for some time. I know a family that has racks of them, picked up cheaply and still cranking out electrons.
Unfortunately it just means they will tighten down planned obsolescence.
LED light bulbs used to be projected to last like over 10 years. Not anymore.
What power source wouldn’t need maintenance after 20 years? Solar is damn reliable if it ‘only’ lasts that long.
Sorta. The panels that were built n the 80s and 90s aren’t really comparable to the ones being produced today.
That’s not to say that today’s panels are bad, but simply that we can’t confidently extrapolate from how old panels behave to newer ones.
The long term economics are based on what a manufacturer will warranty their product for. The manufacturer warranty is based on what makes economic sense for them to publish and to insure. That would definitely lead to conservative viewpoints of longevity vs taking more of an optimistic stance on their products.
These solar arrays are undervalued for the energy they will produce over their lifetime, they will be solid investments.
Wouldn’t efficiency improvements justify repowering those installations with new panels anyway though?
Isn’t the polymer that sandwiches the wafers the bottleneck?
The ones I bought 15 years ago were guaranteed to produce 80% of rated power after 25 years.
That’s awesome. When I was in grad school we were looking at the newer generation of thin film panels that had a fairly linear decline in production… But if silicon crystal has that long of a life to it, maybe the future is in an application of thin film with silicone crystals to bypass the decline ~ likely higher upfront cost but amortized over he life would likely be a huge benefit to the owner… Esp with utilities getting to raise prices so often to keep up with this artificial demand
I bought used panels. They are at least 10 years old.
They work great and I am 100% off-grid.
I’ve never understood why anyone believed this “the warranty is only X years so it only lasts X years” bullshit angle from the media
My phone has a 1 year warranty, my car has a 5 year warranty, my fridge has a 2 year warranty. They’ll all last a lot longer than that
It’s obviously a line from the oil companies trying to keep their profits up by