For As Long As The Sun Shines: The Non-Crisis of PV Module Reliability

[kristopher]

For As Long As The Sun Shines: The Non-Crisis of PV Module Reliability
26 June 2013

What's included in every Yugo owner's manual? A bus schedule. This is just one of countless jokes about the car that some have called the worst in history and that TIME magazine named to its list of “50 worst cars of all time.”

Many people realize that buying the cheapest car or appliance on the market might mean purchasing another in a couple of years when it breaks down. The old adage “you get what you pay for” is never truer than when it comes to important appliances. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that with the rise of the PV industry, companies are competing to come out with more affordable solar panels that aren’t quite making the grade.

A recent article in the New York Times, widely reprinted in other news outlets, reported the solar industry is facing a quality crisis as photovoltaic panels are failing at an alarming rate. This type of press can do a lot of damage to the maturing and growing solar industry. Yet, how prevalent is this so-called crisis, and is it grounded in fact?

Like a rock

Historically, PV modules have been extremely reliable. The first solar modules became available for residential applications in the 1970s. There were a handful of companies manufacturing those pricy panels, and many of those panels are still producing electricity today. Martin Holladay, of the Green Building Advisory Council, recently took his 1979 Arco Solar PV module off his roof to test it. It performed better than the factory specs. “My old module shows no signs of browning, electrical corrosion, or water intrusion,” said Holladay in a blog post. “It certainly looks as if it’s ready to perform for another decade or two.”

Since PV modules have no moving parts they seem like pretty simple products. However...

http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2013_06_26_For_As_Long_As_The_Sun_Shines

Highlights:
"...a rock that makes electricity"

Solar modules standards set by International Electrotechnical Commission and manufacturing around the world is certified for compliance. Look for it when you buy.

Important perspective on Times article about solar defects makes article well worth reading.


And although it is only touched on and isn't directly part of the article, this is a good place to point out that most modules come with a 20 year warranty. This is often miscast by entities like Fox News or local nuclear acolytes as being synonymous with the lifetime of a solar panel. That isn't true. Testing has shown that panels do lose conversion efficiency over time - typically at a rate of one half of one percent per year. This means a 10% loss over 20 years and a 20% loss over 40 years.

[BlueStreak]

1. "Mr. Shockley and his [air quotes] transistor will never replace our trusty vacuum tubes."

[kristopher]

8. We'll never lack naysayers, that's for sure.

The nuclear club here on DU couldn't seem to get enough of posts repeating claims in the shoddy Times article, but notice how they avoid fact based information on the topic like the plague.

On a side note, Shockley was quite a character. Can't deny his contribution to technology but he held some pretty reprehensible social ideas.

[oldhippie]

2. My Solarex SX-60 panels have been on my roof ...

... for 19 years now. They are built like tanks and have not yellowed, tarnished, faded, nor cracked in numerous hailstorms. They look just like they did when new. I haven't done any recent testing at STC, but as a practical matter I haven't noticed any general degradation of power output over the years at all. I do notice the lessening of power output when it gets hot here in the Texas summer, but that is expected.

So there is a good indication that the panels produced twenty years ago stood up as advertised. I just hope that the modern manufacturing techniques that have been devised to increase production and reduce costs have not done anything to cut corners and lessen reliability.

[Yo_Mama]

10. Well, your hope is not going to be totally fulfilled

The older solar panels really were incredibly reliable. Not all of the newer ones are.

NREL testing has only moved up to 2010 manufacture, so we'll see. But multiple recent installations are reporting failure rates that way outstrip anything we've seen historically.

Hopefully all this will get cleaned up in a year or two.

[cprise]

3. Unfortunately, RMI is a libertarian think tank

They are only about one-degree removed from the likes of Cato, who promote a gun-slinging social darwinism in American society.

'Natural Capitalism' failed when it tarred and feathered Al Gore, it biggest proponent, in the 2000 election.

I believe the most responsible and fair societies are social-democratic, and this view is probably shared by a great majority of DUers. So using RMI here may not be helping the pro-solar argument.

[kristopher]

4. I disagree strongly

Would you mind laying out why you evaluate them as "libertarian"? Where do you see any evidence of them promoting a "gun-slinging social darwinism in American society"?

If your evidence is Natural Capitalism, I believe you are either misguided about what libertarianism means or the approach recommended by the book.

[diane in sf]

5. I also disagree strongly. I've been reading their stuff for15 years.

[kristopher]

7. I know of nothing to support the claim cprise made

In my experience that belief originates with unfounded claims from within the bowels of the nuclear and coal industry. They've done everything imaginable to smear the name of Lovins ever since his influential paper in '76. I don't think for a minute that cprise is attempting to do their bidding, but I suspect one of their hit pieces was successful and forms the basis of the opinion expressed.
Here, from that '76 paper, is a sample of how Lovins' (and by extension RMI) looks at the social consequences of energy. It would be easy to misframe the economic focus of the policies Lovins proposes as libertarianism except for the fact that his primary concern is making the market work within any context across the socialist/capitalist regulatory spectrum. No matter where the regulatory needle is generally set within a country, his policies are intended to make the more fundamental structure of the energy production and delivery system more responsive to the needs of individuals and society at large.

...Perhaps the most profound difference between the soft and hard paths is their domestic sociopolitical impact. Both paths, like any 50-year energy path, entail significant social change. But the kinds of social change needed for a hard path are apt to be much less pleasant, less plausible, less compatible with social diversity and personal freedom of choice, and less consistent with traditional values than are the social changes that could make a soft path work.

...In contrast to the soft path's dependence on pluralistic consumer choice in deploying a myriad of small devices and refinements, the hard path depends on difficult, large-scale projects requiring a major social commitment under centralized management. We have noted in Section III the extraordinary capital intensity of centralized, electrified high technologies. Their similarly heavy demands on other scarce resources—skills, labor, materials, special sites—likewise cannot be met by market allocation, but require compulsory diversion from whatever priorities are backed by the weakest constituencies. Quasi-war powers legislation to this end has already been seriously proposed. The hard path, sometimes portrayed as the bastion of free enterprise and free markets, would instead be a world of subsidies, $100-billion bailouts, oligopolies, regulations, nationalization, eminent domain, corporate statism.

Such dirigiste autarchy is the first of many distortions of the political fabric...

In an electrical world, your lifeline comes not from an understandable neighborhood technology run by people you know who are at your own social level, but rather from an alien, remote, and perhaps humiliatingly uncontrollable technology run by a faraway, bureaucratized, technical elite who have probably never heard of you. Decisions about who shall have how much energy at what price also become centralized—a politically dangerous trend because it divides those who use energy from those who supply and regulate it.

The scale and complexity of centralized grids not only make them politically inaccessible to the poor and weak, but also increase the likelihood and size of malfunctions, mistakes and deliberate disruptions....

...If the technology used, like nuclear power, is subject to technical surprises and unique psychological handicaps, prudence or public clamor may require generic shutdowns in case of an unexpected type of malfunction: one may have to choose between turning off a country and persisting in potentially unsafe operation. Indeed, though many in the $100-billion quasi-civilian nuclear industry agree that it could be politically destroyed if a major accident occurred soon, few have considered the economic or political implications of putting at risk such a large fraction of societal capital. How far would governments go to protect against a threat—even a purely political threat—a basket full of such delicate, costly and essential eggs? Already in individual nuclear plants, the cost of a shutdown—often many dollars a second—weighs heavily, perhaps too heavily, in operating and safety decisions.

Any demanding high technology tends to develop influential and dedicated constituencies of those who link its commercial success with both the public welfare and their own. Such sincerely held beliefs, peer pressures, and the harsh demands that the work itself places on time and energy all tend to discourage such people from acquiring a similarly thorough knowledge of alternative policies and the need to discuss them. Moreover, the money and talent invested in an electrical program tend to give it disproportionate influence in the counsels of government, often directly through staff-swapping between policy- and mission-oriented agencies. This incestuous position, now well developed in most industrial countries, distorts both social, and energy priorities in a lasting way that resists political remedy.

For all these reasons, if nuclear power were clean, safe, economic, assured of ample fuel, and socially benign per se, it would still be unattractive because of the political implications of the kind of energy economy it would lock us into. But fission technology also has unique sociopolitical side-effects arising from the impact of human fallibility and malice on the persistently toxic and explosive materials in the fuel cycle. For example, discouraging nuclear violence and coercion requires some abrogation of civil liberties; guarding long-lived wastes against geological or social contingencies implies some form of hierarchical social rigidity or homogeneity to insulate the technological priesthood from social turbulence; and making political decisions about nuclear hazards which are compulsory, remote from social experience, disputed, unknown, or unknowable, may tempt governments to bypass democratic decision in favor of elitist technocracy....

Download full paper here: http://www.rmi.org/cms/Download.aspx?id=4951&file=Energy+Strategy+-+The+Road+Not+Taken+(Reprint+from+Foreign+Affairs%2c+1976).pdf&title=Energy+Strategy%3a+The+Road+Not+Taken

Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken
AUTHOR: Lovins, Amory
DOCUMENT ID: E77-01
YEAR: 1976

If anyone hasn't read this paper, they should. Its significance is on a par with Tragedy of the Commons.

[CRH]

6. I think my panels will easily outlive me, ...

I worry more about the largest accumulation of GHG's being water vapor which is in positive feed back. More clouds as the years pass by will mean less generation. I am wondering if this will be a significant problem in the future, in high humidity areas.

It is a subject that receives no coverage or debate, in the PV conversation.

[kristopher]

9. It's going to take at least another 50 years to get a good handle on their actual lifespan.

...given new models and technologies.

As for water vapor, I don't think that is a real issue as far as solar panels go. Although I haven't read anything on that particular question, my sense is that the amount of change in water vapor that affects climate is far less than it would take to significantly diminish the usefulness of the panels. If you have or get any data on the topic please share it.

[AtheistCrusader]

11. Reminds me of the doom and gloom about the Gen1 Prius.

'Oh, you'll have to change the battery pack in 7 years!'

Uh huh. And Gen1 Prius's are still on the road today, original batteries performing well. The 2001 models hit end-of-life warranty requirements in California, the most restrictive of all states, 2 years ago. Most of them are still going strong. Some cab companies found them still working in excess of 300,000 miles.

[One_Life_To_Give]

12. Half empty vs half full

In substance it seems the same as the Times piece. 20tr warranty from a Co. thats out of business next week is meaningless. While a Quality Panel from an established, reputable manufacturer which would normally have them reputably Certified will last. Or atleast honor the warranty. Sounds like so many other products available on the market. "Let the buyer beware"