• SupremeFuzzler@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Why buy new, when you can just trade it in for a new model in a few millennia? You know a solar system loses 20% of its initial value just by driving it off the lot?

    • chaogomu@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Technically, they lose about 20% of their generation capacity within a few hours of first exposing them to sunlight. It’s one of those weird quirks that researchers have been trying to solve for decades.

      Also, they tend to lose the rest of their generation capacity over decades, not millennia. The industry standard is for a panel to be able to produce 80% of installed capacity after 25 years.

      • jdnewmil
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        1 year ago

        Jesus. The initial transient used to be about 3%, but now is under 1% for most product being sold. It was never near 20%.

        But that doesn’t stop idiots from saying “we have optimizers” and installing them in the shade or facing north and acting surprised when they underperform.

      • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        A team at NREL found evidence for the cause of this a couple years ago. It’s something to do with interaction between the boron and the oxygen content within the silicon cells. If it holds up, hopefully we’re on the road lessening the degradation over time.

        • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Some panels are around 90% at 40 years now, and there isn’t really much of a price premium for those panels either.