“warranty” is a label that manufacturers put on the product for legal reasons. there’s no reason to assume that the product will break after that point. literally some products last 5x what’s written on the warranty.
In most industries for expensive items, manufacturers devise warranties to run out before the product is broken. Making it longer has a relatively small benefit (consumers might put a little bit more confidence in the longevity of a product with a 25 year warranty than one with a 20 year warranty), and making it too long has a pretty high cost (a bunch of warranty claims).
Especially if the useful lifetime is not well known, the incentive is for manufacturers to underpromise in their warranties. All of this applied to solar panels sold 25 years ago, and 25 years was long enough to sell people in solar panels and a line of credit as something that would pay for itself. In that context, I think it would be surprising if the panels didn’t last far longer than the warranty promised.
This is not news but a useful reminder nonetheless.
Advances in efficiency may cause replacing them to be viable. Still.
I wish we could still install the old panels somewhere. They might not be good enough to be rooftop solar anymore, but in the field, why not take all they can still give?
You’ve got to have space you want to use for them. Just because I have 10 200w panels for free doesn’t mean it makes sense to mount them on my roof (which is the only space I have facing the sun), because 400+w are available now and it costs money to mount them.
But it might not make sense to take down my 20 year old 200w panels and replace them, or maybe I can sell them to someone with more space.
Because solar panels are dirt cheap to produce and your time and construction materials and land has value. Recognizing trash is vital for an eco friendly economy.
Edit: some red necks do use old solar panels for off grid, low cost setups.
But that relies on the capitalist assumption that producing trash and CO2 is free because you can dump it withouth having to pay for it, and destroying nature to stripmine for the raw resources only costs the purchasing price because the environment isn’t monetized.
Plus the imperialist assertion that providing decentralized electricity to poor people in developing nations is net negative because it increases the cost of labor from those regions because they can do other productive things than work in your factory.
No. It relies on the assumption that newer panels produce more energy hence are more eco friendly.
Plus: I explicitly mentioned them being a great opportunity for the poor.
Also Pakistan is rapidly building out solar panels without that.
Depends on how you define eco friendly.
The old panels already exist so if you can use them without having to transport them across the world (like the parent comment suggests), continuing to use them is eco-friendlier than producing new ones, which requires additional CO2 from manufacturing
Not doing anything at all has the lowest emissions. But it is obviously not the best way to curb impact while preserving lives and quality of life.
Your adversity to investments that do pay off would be a great hinderance to society as a whole.
Solar panels can be recycled, take very little materials and manufacturing and are usually not the limiting factor when it comes to transitioning into a low damage economy.
Throwing away great amounts of cheap solar power because you would have to lift a finger to achieve it is not… Great.
Using something that still works as long as it doesn’t produce emissions…. Is actually the single best way to curb impact, yeah.
Like literally the best use is long-term. If it still works and you can eek some power out of it rather than toss it, there’s no harm doing so.
Assuming you can recycle it now, you can also recycle it down the line when it genuinely isn’t worth keeping anymore. Until then, if you’ve got space, might as well. Because recycling isn’t free, in energy, emissions, or labor.
preserving lives and quality of life.
ROFL what? Continuing to use old panels in addition to new ones harms lives and quality of life? Ridiculous.
Solar panels can be recycled,
Most can’t, especially the old ones are glued shut.
a grid-tie inverter could get the last bit of juice out of them
Yes. But they don’t produce power by themselves. They need light. Hence mounting, countryside etc. That’s effort.
Looking at six solar arrays in Switzerland that have been running since the late 1980s and early 1990s, the team found most panels still produced more than 80% of their original power after three decades.
Temperature turned out to be a major character in the story. The study reports that lower-altitude systems faced higher thermal stress, with module temperatures reaching about 20 degrees Celsius warmer than high-altitude sites, and those hotter panels tended to degrade faster.
Some of the wear mechanisms were very specific but easy to picture. The encapsulant, the clear plastic layer that helps protect and hold the solar cells, showed more breakdown in hotter conditions, and the researchers linked that to chemical byproducts that can contribute to corrosion over time.
I wonder if new panels last even better, since there’s been more R&D done and manufacturers should have more experience now
Or worse because how to make.money selliing more panels, aka the enshitifcation of solar.panels.
That said I had some installed on my off grid solar cabin 20 yrs ago, 220w per panel, had some new panels installed on my small rural cottage late last uear, 370W per panel, same size panel, so that was sweet. I retired decades ago and run my home through the day on solar (hot wayer system only switches on to use solar thru the day, induction cooktop etc). and sell the excess solar to the grid, including charging my ecar off solar only.
I am not sure how this is new though, i’ve always worked on a 1%-2% degredation per year for panels, not a cliff like degradation.
@poVoq 25 years is decades
Most roofs last 25-30 years or so. I suspect the amount of time that solar panels need to be replaced is around the same time since replacing the panels after you replace the roof only a few years beforehand might be most costly.
What roof only lasts 30 years? I’ve seen even unglazed concrete tiles, the really cheap ones that were from the 60s and still fine.
Asphalt shingles in rainy locations. Unless you want to shell out for slate, concrete, or metal roofing, expect to replace the roof every 15-20 years.
Slate is the way to go if your structure can support the weight. You’ll get 100+ years out of it, but it’s up to 10x more expensive than asphalt shingles and many owners want the cheapest option due to finances or not intending to live in the home long term.
Oh, okay. Around here, those are only used for garden sheds, maybe.
