It’s good to know that they have pretty good longevity. One thing complicating this is that panel technology has gotten better and better during that time. There’s a graph on Wikipedia plotting how much better the various types of panel have gotten since the 70s. A lot of them have doubled in output since the early 90s.
So on the one hand, these old panels are outputting 75% of what they started with, which is good. But on then other hand they are only outputting about 37% of what new panels could.
Not that we should throw old panels away. There’s plenty of sun to go around (though I guess the average homeowner only has one roof to use). It’s just interesting how fast the tech has improved and how that might factor in to some longevity calculations.
If that became a problem, every old panel could be changed by newer ones and the old ones could be installed in a desert until their EOL.
Right, they could be installed in the middle of nowhere as free phone chargers and stuff even if there was no other use for them. Just set them up with a used inverter and some used chargers, whatever etc.
Or maybe a whole lot of them could be put together in the middle of nowhere to make an EV charging station
The weird thing is that in this scenario these panels are still applicable for replacement probably because the the solar panels of today compared to then are about ~40% more efficient. So compared to a new replacement it’s at around 60% efficiency. A major site plans profit off of 30 years and plans to replace glass at that time, so while it may still be somewhat useful long term it’s probably more profitable to replace them.
Sounds like you should install double what you think you need. Reason? The panels will start losing efficiency over time and your electricity usage over time will do nothing but grow. That’s very common.
Dude.
Those panels lost only 20%, so far from half, in 32 years.
That’s impressive.
I didn’t say they lost half but they lost 20% so you need to have at least 120% today and then you need to account for the fact that you will get more electric devices in the future. How are you going to charge your electric car if you don’t have the electric to do it? So therefore you should probably double it.
This is gonna sound so dumb… But they had solar panels back then?!
Carter called for solar panels to be installed on the White House in 1979. Modern ones are probably way more efficient but they were definitely a thing.
Jesus Christ. Look, back in the Stone Age when I went to school the coolest calculator was the TI-36 Solar. It was already that mundane.
Naturally, I used a non-solar Casio, because I wasn’t one of the cool nerds.
