14 ms·

Solar assets ‘underperforming’, modules degrading faster than expected: research

178 points by lando2319 5y ago

YoungWeb 5y ago
"kWh Analytics’ most recent figures place the median annual degradation for residential solar systems as 1.09% and non-residential systems at 0.8%. The report states that over a 20-year asset life, project degradation could therefore be underestimated by as much as 14%, resulting in severaly overestimated performance and revenue forecasts produced within a P50 model."
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  A solar panel’s performance warranty will typically guarantee 90% production at 10 years and 80% at 25 years. It looks like some panels are going to come up a bit short, but at current solar PV module improvement and manufacturing rates, it’s not a show stopper to have current panels exhibit a bit less longevity than anticipated. Very similar to LEDs with longevity promises that aren’t entirely being kept but are still good enough. Panels have gotten so much better, I know folks who replaced 10-15 year old panels with brand new panels, even though they were still producing and within warranty. Panels are also entirely recyclable and infra to do so is being spun up.
  - abfan1127 5y ago
    how are panels entirely recyclable?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      They are run through a shredder and the materials reclaimed. Veolia in Europe has a plant in production, Australia is building one.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      Entirely may be hyperbole but solar panels are mostly glass and aluminum by weight and wafers can be resurfaced.
  - ArkanExplorer 5y ago
    Do we have any insight on what these panels will be like 30, 50, 80 years in the future? This is the lifespan of some homes, and power plants.
    - lkbm 5y ago
      The standard lifespan for a roof seems to be ~20 years, though that seems low to me.
      - toomuchtodo 5y ago
        That’s a reasonable estimate based on architectural shingles, although 15 years is more likely in latitudes with more solar exposure throughout the year (the Sunbelt in the US). Metal roofs last longer, but have a higher initial upfront cost. Huge fan of metal standing seam roofs for longevity (40-70 year lifetime) as well as robust mount support (clipping to the seams) for solar racking. https://youtu.be/k6mrRUZv8Ak https://youtu.be/k6mrRUZv8Ak
        nicoburns 5y ago
        This thread has loads of people talking about roofs lasting 50-100 years https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5575330/when-does-this-roof-need-replacing/p2 https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5575330/when...
        toomuchtodo 5y ago
        My estimate is what home insurers use. Roofs can and do last longer.
        quickthrowman 5y ago
        Yes, there are types of roofs that last a long time. Standing seam metal, slate, clay, concrete, and copper roofs all last a long time (50+ years). Asphalt shingles and EPDM flat roofs last 15-25, cedar shakes can last 30+ years. The long lasting ones are substantially more expensive than asphalt shingles, 3x at a minimum.
  - cure 5y ago
    Indeed - the LG NEON-R 365 panels I got two years ago have these specs: * First 5 years : 95% * After 5th year : 0.4% annual degradation * 25 years : 88.4% The NEON-2 380W from this year looks roughly equivalent, and they have these specs: * 1st year 98.5% * from 2-24th year: 0.33%/year down * 90.6% at year 25
  - kragen 5y ago
    Indeed! However, generation companies bidding on PPAs are in a somewhat different situation from LED lighting customers; if they bid 2% higher than the competition, they lose the deal, and if they bid 2% lower than what they'll actually produce, they build the plant and lose money on the deal. So if the average panel efficiency over a 20-year PPA is 91.0% of the initial efficiency (as this article suggests), but they'd budgeted for 95.4%, that's potentially a huge deal for them; it's the difference between being 2.3% low and 2.3% high. By contrast, there are very few businesses that will be unprofitable if their LED lightbulbs burn out 2.3% faster than predicted. (LED lightbulbs burning out is a stupid market-for-lemons market failure, but that's a different topic.) Panels getting better is actually another potential risk for these projects—if, three years from now, low-cost PV modules cost €0.09 per peak watt instead of €0.17 like today, then PV plants built at that point will have dramatically lower costs than PV plants built today, and probably PPAs signed then will also have dramatically lower costs. When plants are built without a PPA, this could result in those plants being "stranded assets" that can't make enough money to pay the interest on the bank loan, like many coal plants today, but even when there is a PPA, the electric utilities and ratepayers (who in many cases are also taxpayers) have strong incentives to find ways to circumvent it, for example through inflation or bankruptcy. Now, €0.09/Wp sounds like a ridiculously low price; window glass, for example, costs substantially more than that. It's hard to see how PV panels could reduce their raw material use enough to get that low. So maybe it won't happen. Or maybe we'll find a way. (In Derctuo, for example, I suggested that new solar modules could use chicken wire instead of glass, though that might drop the efficiency of low-cost panels from 16% to 15%.)
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      I don’t think they’ll be stranded assets as a gas plant would be, as there’s no marginal cost for fuel. If the project doesn’t break even, debt will be shed, someone will take a haircut, and the solar asset will continue to produce. We’re only talking a handful of basis points here.
      - kragen 5y ago
        That's a good point. The bank might prefer a haircut to litigating an insolvency, especially if the best-case scenario for the insolvency is that they get possession of the power plant.
melling 5y ago
Within a decade or so nuclear energy will finally be back. Unfortunately, we will have squandered 3 decades of not using it more extensively. What’s that Churchill quote about Americans? [Updates] - I mean the start of building because we will realize we need it. - Solar won’t provide a base load, no matter how cheap it gets. Yes, i know about the billions and billions of batteries - We didnt need next generation nuclear. it was important to reduce emissions over the past 3 decades
- Karunamon 5y ago
  >Within a decade or so nuclear energy will finally be back. I find this to be overly optimistic. Even millennials and gen-Z parrot the tired NIMBYism that has characterized all discussion of nuclear power for the past few decades, so that overly-emotional, irrational mindset seems to be alive and well. Its problems are entirely emotional and political. We could completely solve waste storage, completely solve safety, and we'd still be dealing with the ignorant general public for another couple generations.
- bdamm 5y ago
  Churchill's quote could be applied to the English as well, in this case.
- pjc50 5y ago
  By "within a decade", do you mean the start or end of the projects? Hinkley Point C is at the decade mark from its initial announcement and roughly halfway through the decade of its construction.
- flavius29663 5y ago
  It's not really squandered away. I am all for postponing nuclear until we can get our shit together and have proper security in place. The workers at the Fukushima plant had a lower salary than McDonalds employees. I don't want that nuclear. I want modular, mass produced, failsafe nuclear plants somewhere in the middle of the desert
  - abfan1127 5y ago
anfilt 5y ago
Not subscribed so can't look at the report, but kinda wanted to look at the report. I was curious if they broke down the source/manufacturer of the panels.
- lkbm 5y ago
  I was able to just click through. Here's the PDF: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b4e34d1f2e6b166c33dc4f1/t/60bac2d447c5540fbe510992/1622852311371/Solar+Risk+Assessment+2020.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b4e34d1f2e6b166c33dc...
pjc50 5y ago
Well, that's not great, but not a disaster either given the magnitude of the numbers. What is interesting is the "lemon" problem that is similar to ones seen all over tech: > found different BOMs used within the same product code for one manufacturer identified a near-5% difference in potential-induced degradation (PID) between the two BOM combinations. Different batches within "the same product" can be made very differently, making it hard to buy for reliability since you can only determine this in retrospect. There's probably going to be an "IBM deathstar" or "capacitor plague" issue in the medium term. But it won't be very apparent outside the industry.
tw04 5y ago
“Chronically underperforming” seems a bit overly dramatic when degradation is 0.5% worse than expected. While tracking field performance is important, that doesn’t really change the equation of solar being cheap energy.
- cure 5y ago
  Well, you can look at it that way, or you can say that the degradation appears to be 100% worse than expected. They modeled 0.5% and it seems real world numbers are more like 1% , at least for the installations they observed.
  - ishtanbul 5y ago
    It is a very significant difference in terms of investor returns which are already very low in the base case of p50 and very sensitive to changes in output
agentultra 5y ago
I'm curious if there's regulation on managing the end-of-life cycles for PV; there's an interesting article on recycling them: https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2017/10/the-opportunities-of-solar-panel-recycling https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2017/10/the-opportunities-... But it seems it's hypothetical. As far as I know most of these, in North America, end up in the trash. Which is not great due to the toxic materials used leaching into the water system. Anyone know more about this?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hef19898 5y ago
  There is some in Europe, we even have an industry association charged with recycling. How much of the old modules are actually recycled, I don't know. Chinese are buying used ones yo resell in developing countries.
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  There are a few companies specializing in recycling solar panels. It's doable. Depending on the type, the panels actually may contain valuable stuff like silver, aluminium, or copper in addition to harmless silicon. Some of the nasty stuff includes lead and cadmium. However, it's not a given that that just leaks out of the panels. Storing that in an inert form in a landfill might be fine. I'm guessing the recycling industry will start ramping up in a decade or two wWhen most of the recently installed stuff starts reaching the end of its useful life. Older PV exists of course but there's just a lot less of that. It's one of those things that will get sorted as demand increases and economies of scale increase. Meanwhile, local regulations are probably a great way to avoid people dumping toxic stuff in landfills. How that's not a thing to begin with is a bit mind boggling. On a positive note, those landfills might be the mines of the future as they contain lots of valuable resources that people discarded.
jnmandal 5y ago
The firm doing this research also sell insurance that covers solar panel under performance. So while there might be truth in what they are saying, just keep in mind there is conflict of interest here.
- tantalor 5y ago
  How is it a conflict of interest? Their business is to price their rates correctly, so they need to measure the actual failure characteristics. Pricing insurance is a balancing act. If you overestimate then your rates will not be competitive. If you underestimate then you pay out more in claims then you collect in premiums.
  - calvano915 5y ago
    This information may encourage more purchases of their insurance product. It's a conflict that is worth stating when considering the information they're providing.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Do insurance companies advertise? If they do, then spreading viral stories about the need for their kind of insurance is probably a valid strategy too.
  - webmobdev 5y ago
    How is it a conflict of interest? They could be exaggerating their findings - fear and anxiety are excellent motivators used by advertisers since the dawn of capitalism.
  - Frost1x 5y ago
    The conflict of interest is that they have financial incentives for you to believe failure rates are worse than they are. Insurance may need accurate assessments for a sustainable business model, but their business model also relies on people assessing risk as higher than their assessment or at least that an accurate risk assessment + overhead fees to assess it is less than my own. As a consumer, I only want insurance if I think they've assessed the value to be lower than what I'd pay out of pocket to 'self insure.' As an insurance company, I want people the opposite, that reality of risk lies lower than what you think it is, so I can make money. I want a bunch of worried low risk people to pay overhead and marginal fees so my margins are frothier.
barney54 5y ago
It would be nice to know the degradation rates by panel manufacturer. Jinko Solar, for example, claims they make premium panels. How do the degradation rates compare with other panel manufacturers.
webmobdev 5y ago
If I remember right, China has been the leading largest manufacturers of Solar Panels in the world for sometime now. And they are not famous for quality. I wonder if they did a comparison based on that factor too? If this is not just an issue with Chinese solar panels, then it is bad news for the industry. Solar power generation at home will not be economically viable if the solar panels don't perform and last to the 10 years or so that they currently guarantee. Especially when they are already hampered by high battery costs (which needs to be replaced every 3-5 years).
- oblio 5y ago
  > And they are not famous for quality. China's been making 50% of all our stuff for a few decades now. From the cheap knock-offs to the actual, high quality things. China's "not famous for quality" because a lot of people don't want to pay for quality, but they can for sure make quality things. Several of Huawei's phones had just been declared "the best phone hardware money can buy" by several big reviewers, just as they got hit by US sanctions last year, for example.
  - webmobdev 5y ago
    China's "not famous for quality" because a lot of people don't want to pay for quality, but they can for sure make quality things. Sure, and that's what I want to know - are the Chinese solar panels being used in the industry premium good quality ones are the cheaper low quality ones?
    - oblio 5y ago
      As with most of these things, it's probably both :-)
    - russli1993 5y ago
      For example, Jinko solar's panels have leading conversion efficiency in the industry. I think that many international products that are made in china are low quality is because when international buyers procure from Chinese manufactures they tend to aim for lower costs, which results in lower quality and standards. You pay for what you get. Chinese companies of course will charge more for high quality, competitive and differentiated products. These products require R&D which can only be paid for with margins. http://www.jinkosolar.com/en/site/tigerpro http://www.jinkosolar.com/en/site/tigerpro
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
What does the report actually say about P99 estimates? That's an estimate of output that should be exceeded 99 percent of the time, so it should be a very cautious estimate. But it seems weird to specify only P99. Does that mean all the other more ambitious estimates from the same system are fine? If not then why didn't they just say "PV isn't performing as well as predicted"? I'm trying to figure how that would be mathematically possible but I'm mostly confusing myself.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Someone linked the actual report, so the answer appears to be: There's greater variance in sunshine between years than some business plans accounted for, so while average performance for a site over time, and solar PV on a nation scale is still as predicted, one individual solar business can go under if they borrow all the money up front and don't plan ahead for having a bad year or two early in the term.
sys_64738 5y ago
Call me when solar shingles are actually cost effective. Having hulking solar panel nailed to my roof is a big no.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  My wife shares the sentiment. To me it’s an acceptable trade off, similar to having gutters installed around the house, or a leech field for a septic, or a pump house.
  - handrous 5y ago
    What does rooftop solar do for roofing replacement costs? Seems like you'd need to get some much-more-expensive labor involved than the usual roofing crew for your typical asphalt-shingle roof, and you'd have to bring them out twice (once to remove, once to re-install at the end). Thanks to hail, I'm very likely to need to replace my roofing at least twice in the lifetime of a solar installation (I'm assuming solar panels are very, very resilient against hail—if not, I guess I'll have to forget about ever doing that, period). How much more likely are roof leaks with rooftop solar? More holes in the roof (for mounting the panels) has got to increase the leak risk.
    - ed25519FUUU 5y ago
      I asked this same question to solarcity when I had my panels installed 5 years ago. The deal was they come out, take off the panels, store them, and come install them again for $500.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  I think I'd rather have them in the backyard on some sort of human-accessible bracketry.
- driverdan 5y ago
  It makes far more sense to have a separation of concerns. By having roofing and solar separate you can address problems with them independently. If you combine them suddenly a problem with one is a problem with the other. This principle applies to most things in life. Having a dumb TV and a separate internet connected streaming box, a computer with a dumb monitor, an audio amplifier and standalone speakers, etc. Combining things typically makes their initial setup easier but in the long run they cost more and generate more waste.
thrower123 5y ago
Utility companies are also doing hinky things where they don't correctly credit kilowatts that are put back on the grid from residential solar.
ncmncm 5y ago
If correct, it is quite a large difference from previous estiates: double! But as an absolute measure, does it matter much? In particular, how much more would anyone pay for a less-quickly degrading panel, or for insurance against its lost performance, given how much less need be paid for its replacement in ten or twenty years?
Proven 5y ago
Faster than expected by whom? The clueless government officials and climatists who argued for the handouts?
Growling_owl 5y ago
There is no money to be made in the form of profits or FCF from renewables. Not only that, there is no money to be made in energy which isn't fossil in general. This includes Carbon Capture, storage, and nuclear fission/fusion as well. Fossil fuels extraction is the best of the industrial/non-talent based sectors, Saudi Aramco basically sticks straws in the sand and oil comes out at 7 dollars per barrel. Electrons they are all the same, there is not some consumer convenience in using green electrons. The only success story in terms of marketcap is Tesla, but that company is based on constant lies told by the CEO to keep people energized. If we manage to solve climate change it would be the biggest letdown ever for the general population: the way this thing is being socially and politically advertised people expect a technoutopian future where all of a sudden rainbows would appear all over the place from cows derriere in lieu of methane. A technoutopian pipedream sold by Musk and the like. In reality we'd just manage to keep things as they are now, our lives won't change that much. Tl;dr Long SaaS and fintech, short energy and construction
- Shadonototro 5y ago
  getting rid of oil is not to "save out planet", but to save your civilization people in the west don't want an Arab hegemony, they want to control everyone, including their assets energy sells very well because everyone needs energy the only reason why terrorism exists today in ME is because of this, america doesn't want his hegemony to go
wolfi1 5y ago
much of the energy needed in private households and the industry can be covered with solar thermal energy. admitted, it's low tech, but the components are cheap and the efficiency is much higher than PV efficiency
killjoywashere 5y ago
I just pulled my SolarCity contract and it does indeed estimate 0.5% decrement per year (strictly, it's estimates are 1% ever 2 years). So the question is: who looses on this deal? My quick read is that they owe me a refund for any measured underperformance. Has anybody walked this dog out to see what their measurements are?
RandomWorker 5y ago
NREL has a great report on this [1]. The median degradation is 0.5%, average Si 0.7%, but in their report it could be as high as 4%. Typically, they are quite fast at the start then slow down as the panel ages. Because they assess the degradation with a 0.5% number and 1.0% is more typical the bell curve moves up. The expectation is P99 [2] which is the question "What is the chance that we see calculated yields exceeds 99% probability?" depends heavily on how the calculation was done in the first place. Some other points mentioned that, wild fires reduces the yields with 6% and hail storms damage the PV systems. Interesting work! Value proposition for PV is lowered by climate change impacts. [1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf [2] https://solargis.com/blog/best-practices/how-to-calculate-p90-or-other-pxx-pv-energy-yield-estimates https://solargis.com/blog/best-practices/how-to-calculate-p9...
8bitsrule 5y ago
> operational solar assets are continuing to experience higher than expected rates of degradation, with annual degradation in the field observed at around 1%. So, after 33 years (12,000 days producing, oh, 10kWh per day = 120 MWh), they'll only put out 2/3 of their rated output? ? Without doing the financial math, already sounds like a damn good investment to me. And, I'd guess, we'll get better at making them in that time.

178 points by lando2319 5y ago

"kWh Analytics’ most recent figures place the median annual degradation for residential solar systems as 1.09% and non-residential systems at 0.8%. The report states that over a 20-year asset life, project degradation could therefore be underestimated by as much as 14%, resulting in severaly overestimated performance and revenue forecasts produced within a P50 model."

toomuchtodo 5y ago
A solar panel’s performance warranty will typically guarantee 90% production at 10 years and 80% at 25 years. It looks like some panels are going to come up a bit short, but at current solar PV module improvement and manufacturing rates, it’s not a show stopper to have current panels exhibit a bit less longevity than anticipated. Very similar to LEDs with longevity promises that aren’t entirely being kept but are still good enough. Panels have gotten so much better, I know folks who replaced 10-15 year old panels with brand new panels, even though they were still producing and within warranty. Panels are also entirely recyclable and infra to do so is being spun up.
- abfan1127 5y ago
  how are panels entirely recyclable?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    They are run through a shredder and the materials reclaimed. Veolia in Europe has a plant in production, Australia is building one.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    Entirely may be hyperbole but solar panels are mostly glass and aluminum by weight and wafers can be resurfaced.
- ArkanExplorer 5y ago
  Do we have any insight on what these panels will be like 30, 50, 80 years in the future? This is the lifespan of some homes, and power plants.
  - lkbm 5y ago
    The standard lifespan for a roof seems to be ~20 years, though that seems low to me.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      That’s a reasonable estimate based on architectural shingles, although 15 years is more likely in latitudes with more solar exposure throughout the year (the Sunbelt in the US). Metal roofs last longer, but have a higher initial upfront cost. Huge fan of metal standing seam roofs for longevity (40-70 year lifetime) as well as robust mount support (clipping to the seams) for solar racking. https://youtu.be/k6mrRUZv8Ak https://youtu.be/k6mrRUZv8Ak
      - nicoburns 5y ago
        This thread has loads of people talking about roofs lasting 50-100 years https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5575330/when-does-this-roof-need-replacing/p2 https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5575330/when...
        toomuchtodo 5y ago
        My estimate is what home insurers use. Roofs can and do last longer.
        quickthrowman 5y ago
        Yes, there are types of roofs that last a long time. Standing seam metal, slate, clay, concrete, and copper roofs all last a long time (50+ years). Asphalt shingles and EPDM flat roofs last 15-25, cedar shakes can last 30+ years. The long lasting ones are substantially more expensive than asphalt shingles, 3x at a minimum.
- cure 5y ago
  Indeed - the LG NEON-R 365 panels I got two years ago have these specs: * First 5 years : 95% * After 5th year : 0.4% annual degradation * 25 years : 88.4% The NEON-2 380W from this year looks roughly equivalent, and they have these specs: * 1st year 98.5% * from 2-24th year: 0.33%/year down * 90.6% at year 25
- kragen 5y ago
  Indeed! However, generation companies bidding on PPAs are in a somewhat different situation from LED lighting customers; if they bid 2% higher than the competition, they lose the deal, and if they bid 2% lower than what they'll actually produce, they build the plant and lose money on the deal. So if the average panel efficiency over a 20-year PPA is 91.0% of the initial efficiency (as this article suggests), but they'd budgeted for 95.4%, that's potentially a huge deal for them; it's the difference between being 2.3% low and 2.3% high. By contrast, there are very few businesses that will be unprofitable if their LED lightbulbs burn out 2.3% faster than predicted. (LED lightbulbs burning out is a stupid market-for-lemons market failure, but that's a different topic.) Panels getting better is actually another potential risk for these projects—if, three years from now, low-cost PV modules cost €0.09 per peak watt instead of €0.17 like today, then PV plants built at that point will have dramatically lower costs than PV plants built today, and probably PPAs signed then will also have dramatically lower costs. When plants are built without a PPA, this could result in those plants being "stranded assets" that can't make enough money to pay the interest on the bank loan, like many coal plants today, but even when there is a PPA, the electric utilities and ratepayers (who in many cases are also taxpayers) have strong incentives to find ways to circumvent it, for example through inflation or bankruptcy. Now, €0.09/Wp sounds like a ridiculously low price; window glass, for example, costs substantially more than that. It's hard to see how PV panels could reduce their raw material use enough to get that low. So maybe it won't happen. Or maybe we'll find a way. (In Derctuo, for example, I suggested that new solar modules could use chicken wire instead of glass, though that might drop the efficiency of low-cost panels from 16% to 15%.)
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    I don’t think they’ll be stranded assets as a gas plant would be, as there’s no marginal cost for fuel. If the project doesn’t break even, debt will be shed, someone will take a haircut, and the solar asset will continue to produce. We’re only talking a handful of basis points here.
    - kragen 5y ago
      That's a good point. The bank might prefer a haircut to litigating an insolvency, especially if the best-case scenario for the insolvency is that they get possession of the power plant.

melling 5y ago

Within a decade or so nuclear energy will finally be back. Unfortunately, we will have squandered 3 decades of not using it more extensively. What’s that Churchill quote about Americans? [Updates] - I mean the start of building because we will realize we need it. - Solar won’t provide a base load, no matter how cheap it gets. Yes, i know about the billions and billions of batteries - We didnt need next generation nuclear. it was important to reduce emissions over the past 3 decades

Karunamon 5y ago
>Within a decade or so nuclear energy will finally be back. I find this to be overly optimistic. Even millennials and gen-Z parrot the tired NIMBYism that has characterized all discussion of nuclear power for the past few decades, so that overly-emotional, irrational mindset seems to be alive and well. Its problems are entirely emotional and political. We could completely solve waste storage, completely solve safety, and we'd still be dealing with the ignorant general public for another couple generations.
bdamm 5y ago
Churchill's quote could be applied to the English as well, in this case.
pjc50 5y ago
By "within a decade", do you mean the start or end of the projects? Hinkley Point C is at the decade mark from its initial announcement and roughly halfway through the decade of its construction.
flavius29663 5y ago
It's not really squandered away. I am all for postponing nuclear until we can get our shit together and have proper security in place. The workers at the Fukushima plant had a lower salary than McDonalds employees. I don't want that nuclear. I want modular, mass produced, failsafe nuclear plants somewhere in the middle of the desert
- abfan1127 5y ago

anfilt 5y ago

Not subscribed so can't look at the report, but kinda wanted to look at the report. I was curious if they broke down the source/manufacturer of the panels.

lkbm 5y ago
I was able to just click through. Here's the PDF: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b4e34d1f2e6b166c33dc4f1/t/60bac2d447c5540fbe510992/1622852311371/Solar+Risk+Assessment+2020.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b4e34d1f2e6b166c33dc...

pjc50 5y ago

Well, that's not great, but not a disaster either given the magnitude of the numbers. What is interesting is the "lemon" problem that is similar to ones seen all over tech: > found different BOMs used within the same product code for one manufacturer identified a near-5% difference in potential-induced degradation (PID) between the two BOM combinations. Different batches within "the same product" can be made very differently, making it hard to buy for reliability since you can only determine this in retrospect. There's probably going to be an "IBM deathstar" or "capacitor plague" issue in the medium term. But it won't be very apparent outside the industry.

tw04 5y ago

“Chronically underperforming” seems a bit overly dramatic when degradation is 0.5% worse than expected. While tracking field performance is important, that doesn’t really change the equation of solar being cheap energy.

cure 5y ago
Well, you can look at it that way, or you can say that the degradation appears to be 100% worse than expected. They modeled 0.5% and it seems real world numbers are more like 1% , at least for the installations they observed.
- ishtanbul 5y ago
  It is a very significant difference in terms of investor returns which are already very low in the base case of p50 and very sensitive to changes in output

agentultra 5y ago

I'm curious if there's regulation on managing the end-of-life cycles for PV; there's an interesting article on recycling them: https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2017/10/the-opportunities-of-solar-panel-recycling https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2017/10/the-opportunities-... But it seems it's hypothetical. As far as I know most of these, in North America, end up in the trash. Which is not great due to the toxic materials used leaching into the water system. Anyone know more about this?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hef19898 5y ago
There is some in Europe, we even have an industry association charged with recycling. How much of the old modules are actually recycled, I don't know. Chinese are buying used ones yo resell in developing countries.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
There are a few companies specializing in recycling solar panels. It's doable. Depending on the type, the panels actually may contain valuable stuff like silver, aluminium, or copper in addition to harmless silicon. Some of the nasty stuff includes lead and cadmium. However, it's not a given that that just leaks out of the panels. Storing that in an inert form in a landfill might be fine. I'm guessing the recycling industry will start ramping up in a decade or two wWhen most of the recently installed stuff starts reaching the end of its useful life. Older PV exists of course but there's just a lot less of that. It's one of those things that will get sorted as demand increases and economies of scale increase. Meanwhile, local regulations are probably a great way to avoid people dumping toxic stuff in landfills. How that's not a thing to begin with is a bit mind boggling. On a positive note, those landfills might be the mines of the future as they contain lots of valuable resources that people discarded.

jnmandal 5y ago

The firm doing this research also sell insurance that covers solar panel under performance. So while there might be truth in what they are saying, just keep in mind there is conflict of interest here.

tantalor 5y ago
How is it a conflict of interest? Their business is to price their rates correctly, so they need to measure the actual failure characteristics. Pricing insurance is a balancing act. If you overestimate then your rates will not be competitive. If you underestimate then you pay out more in claims then you collect in premiums.
- calvano915 5y ago
  This information may encourage more purchases of their insurance product. It's a conflict that is worth stating when considering the information they're providing.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  Do insurance companies advertise? If they do, then spreading viral stories about the need for their kind of insurance is probably a valid strategy too.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  How is it a conflict of interest? They could be exaggerating their findings - fear and anxiety are excellent motivators used by advertisers since the dawn of capitalism.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  The conflict of interest is that they have financial incentives for you to believe failure rates are worse than they are. Insurance may need accurate assessments for a sustainable business model, but their business model also relies on people assessing risk as higher than their assessment or at least that an accurate risk assessment + overhead fees to assess it is less than my own. As a consumer, I only want insurance if I think they've assessed the value to be lower than what I'd pay out of pocket to 'self insure.' As an insurance company, I want people the opposite, that reality of risk lies lower than what you think it is, so I can make money. I want a bunch of worried low risk people to pay overhead and marginal fees so my margins are frothier.

barney54 5y ago

It would be nice to know the degradation rates by panel manufacturer. Jinko Solar, for example, claims they make premium panels. How do the degradation rates compare with other panel manufacturers.

webmobdev 5y ago

If I remember right, China has been the leading largest manufacturers of Solar Panels in the world for sometime now. And they are not famous for quality. I wonder if they did a comparison based on that factor too? If this is not just an issue with Chinese solar panels, then it is bad news for the industry. Solar power generation at home will not be economically viable if the solar panels don't perform and last to the 10 years or so that they currently guarantee. Especially when they are already hampered by high battery costs (which needs to be replaced every 3-5 years).

oblio 5y ago
> And they are not famous for quality. China's been making 50% of all our stuff for a few decades now. From the cheap knock-offs to the actual, high quality things. China's "not famous for quality" because a lot of people don't want to pay for quality, but they can for sure make quality things. Several of Huawei's phones had just been declared "the best phone hardware money can buy" by several big reviewers, just as they got hit by US sanctions last year, for example.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  China's "not famous for quality" because a lot of people don't want to pay for quality, but they can for sure make quality things. Sure, and that's what I want to know - are the Chinese solar panels being used in the industry premium good quality ones are the cheaper low quality ones?
  - oblio 5y ago
    As with most of these things, it's probably both :-)
  - russli1993 5y ago
    For example, Jinko solar's panels have leading conversion efficiency in the industry. I think that many international products that are made in china are low quality is because when international buyers procure from Chinese manufactures they tend to aim for lower costs, which results in lower quality and standards. You pay for what you get. Chinese companies of course will charge more for high quality, competitive and differentiated products. These products require R&D which can only be paid for with margins. http://www.jinkosolar.com/en/site/tigerpro http://www.jinkosolar.com/en/site/tigerpro

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

What does the report actually say about P99 estimates? That's an estimate of output that should be exceeded 99 percent of the time, so it should be a very cautious estimate. But it seems weird to specify only P99. Does that mean all the other more ambitious estimates from the same system are fine? If not then why didn't they just say "PV isn't performing as well as predicted"? I'm trying to figure how that would be mathematically possible but I'm mostly confusing myself.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Someone linked the actual report, so the answer appears to be: There's greater variance in sunshine between years than some business plans accounted for, so while average performance for a site over time, and solar PV on a nation scale is still as predicted, one individual solar business can go under if they borrow all the money up front and don't plan ahead for having a bad year or two early in the term.

sys_64738 5y ago

Call me when solar shingles are actually cost effective. Having hulking solar panel nailed to my roof is a big no.

ed25519FUUU 5y ago
My wife shares the sentiment. To me it’s an acceptable trade off, similar to having gutters installed around the house, or a leech field for a septic, or a pump house.
- handrous 5y ago
  What does rooftop solar do for roofing replacement costs? Seems like you'd need to get some much-more-expensive labor involved than the usual roofing crew for your typical asphalt-shingle roof, and you'd have to bring them out twice (once to remove, once to re-install at the end). Thanks to hail, I'm very likely to need to replace my roofing at least twice in the lifetime of a solar installation (I'm assuming solar panels are very, very resilient against hail—if not, I guess I'll have to forget about ever doing that, period). How much more likely are roof leaks with rooftop solar? More holes in the roof (for mounting the panels) has got to increase the leak risk.
  - ed25519FUUU 5y ago
    I asked this same question to solarcity when I had my panels installed 5 years ago. The deal was they come out, take off the panels, store them, and come install them again for $500.
kingsuper20 5y ago
I think I'd rather have them in the backyard on some sort of human-accessible bracketry.
driverdan 5y ago
It makes far more sense to have a separation of concerns. By having roofing and solar separate you can address problems with them independently. If you combine them suddenly a problem with one is a problem with the other. This principle applies to most things in life. Having a dumb TV and a separate internet connected streaming box, a computer with a dumb monitor, an audio amplifier and standalone speakers, etc. Combining things typically makes their initial setup easier but in the long run they cost more and generate more waste.

thrower123 5y ago

Utility companies are also doing hinky things where they don't correctly credit kilowatts that are put back on the grid from residential solar.

ncmncm 5y ago

If correct, it is quite a large difference from previous estiates: double! But as an absolute measure, does it matter much? In particular, how much more would anyone pay for a less-quickly degrading panel, or for insurance against its lost performance, given how much less need be paid for its replacement in ten or twenty years?

Proven 5y ago

Faster than expected by whom? The clueless government officials and climatists who argued for the handouts?

Growling_owl 5y ago

There is no money to be made in the form of profits or FCF from renewables. Not only that, there is no money to be made in energy which isn't fossil in general. This includes Carbon Capture, storage, and nuclear fission/fusion as well. Fossil fuels extraction is the best of the industrial/non-talent based sectors, Saudi Aramco basically sticks straws in the sand and oil comes out at 7 dollars per barrel. Electrons they are all the same, there is not some consumer convenience in using green electrons. The only success story in terms of marketcap is Tesla, but that company is based on constant lies told by the CEO to keep people energized. If we manage to solve climate change it would be the biggest letdown ever for the general population: the way this thing is being socially and politically advertised people expect a technoutopian future where all of a sudden rainbows would appear all over the place from cows derriere in lieu of methane. A technoutopian pipedream sold by Musk and the like. In reality we'd just manage to keep things as they are now, our lives won't change that much. Tl;dr Long SaaS and fintech, short energy and construction

Shadonototro 5y ago
getting rid of oil is not to "save out planet", but to save your civilization people in the west don't want an Arab hegemony, they want to control everyone, including their assets energy sells very well because everyone needs energy the only reason why terrorism exists today in ME is because of this, america doesn't want his hegemony to go

wolfi1 5y ago

much of the energy needed in private households and the industry can be covered with solar thermal energy. admitted, it's low tech, but the components are cheap and the efficiency is much higher than PV efficiency

killjoywashere 5y ago

I just pulled my SolarCity contract and it does indeed estimate 0.5% decrement per year (strictly, it's estimates are 1% ever 2 years). So the question is: who looses on this deal? My quick read is that they owe me a refund for any measured underperformance. Has anybody walked this dog out to see what their measurements are?

RandomWorker 5y ago

NREL has a great report on this [1]. The median degradation is 0.5%, average Si 0.7%, but in their report it could be as high as 4%. Typically, they are quite fast at the start then slow down as the panel ages. Because they assess the degradation with a 0.5% number and 1.0% is more typical the bell curve moves up. The expectation is P99 [2] which is the question "What is the chance that we see calculated yields exceeds 99% probability?" depends heavily on how the calculation was done in the first place. Some other points mentioned that, wild fires reduces the yields with 6% and hail storms damage the PV systems. Interesting work! Value proposition for PV is lowered by climate change impacts. [1] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf [2] https://solargis.com/blog/best-practices/how-to-calculate-p90-or-other-pxx-pv-energy-yield-estimates https://solargis.com/blog/best-practices/how-to-calculate-p9...

8bitsrule 5y ago

> operational solar assets are continuing to experience higher than expected rates of degradation, with annual degradation in the field observed at around 1%. So, after 33 years (12,000 days producing, oh, 10kWh per day = 120 MWh), they'll only put out 2/3 of their rated output? ? Without doing the financial math, already sounds like a damn good investment to me. And, I'd guess, we'll get better at making them in that time.