3 ms·

What about panel degradation?

• defrost 7mo ago
  There are 30 year old still functioning panels in Australia. Buried in that longevity, is an observation that a fifth of panels degrade faster than expected The long tail appears on graphs showing the degradation rate per year of the panels, indicating that up to 20% of all samples perform 1.5 times worse than the average. See (Uni NSW study) Cracking the ‘long tail’ problem: new research targets hidden solar panel issue (2026) - https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2026/01/research-targets-long-tail-solar-panel-issue https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2026/01/research-targe... and discussion: Maximising time in the sun: how to maintain and repair solar panels to make them last (2026) - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/13/maximising-time-in-the-sun-how-to-maintain-and-repair-solar-panels-to-make-them-last https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/13/maxim... This is more about the lifetime of many PV panels in Australia (temps to 45 C so far) not specifically about PV panels with many hours at > 50 C.
• mixermachine 7mo ago
  It exists and does degrade panels but the time horizon is pretty wide. Real world data shows something like 0.5% to 0.7% degregation per year on average. At the start the degregation is higher and but it slows down with age. So a 20 year old panel might be at around 80% in the worst case. Often they are in much better shape. This seems like a pretty good deal to me.