Was anyone else thrown by "leased solar systems"?
this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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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?
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.
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.
Note to antipodes: you do want to install yours north
How much capacity would you say the Milky Way has left then?
Just 4 billion? Pfft! I’ll stick with fossil fuels, thanks!
At least until vacuum or dark energy is readily available. Gotta plan for the eventual heat death of the universe ya know.
They also predict a 12% chance that the Solar System will be ejected from the new galaxy sometime during the collision. Such an event would have no adverse effect on the system and the chances of any sort of disturbance to the Sun or planets themselves may be remote.
"We" may be able to explore the cosmos without leaving home.
Or, given 10 million years head start plus building time, you could use a Caplan Thruster stellar engine to make that 100% sure
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.
Some panels are around 90% at 40 years now, and there isn't really much of a price premium for those panels either.
Ah so it's not "leashed solar systems"
We'll blow ourselves up before we get that far though.
that actually reminds me of a thing from a scifi book I listened to where they took some low acceleration but powerful planet moving tech and smashed two decently sized planets into the enemies sun from opposite sides, by the time they got the planets to the sun they where moving as close to the speed of light as they could get them so the effect was pretty brutal
Was it a mass driver?
Sorry but we where looking for "what is a mass driver"
I was to be a God, you see?
Should we expect more second hand solar panels on the market at lower prices because of this ? Seems obvious but what do I know ?
As more of anything is out there, more will be for sale used, but how badly will anyone want them? They degrade over time and installing is a huge cost. How much are you willing to pay for mismatched used solar panels from a 15 year old system?
Might be interesting for a "do it yourself" project, from someone after retirement who has enough land space. But only if the price is low enough.
New panels without installation goes for what now ? Maybe $1 or $2 per peek Watts ? I would say 10% to 20% of the new panel price would be interesting.
Maybe $1 or $2 per peek Watts
More like 60 cents. Installing/connecting the panels generally costs far more than buying them even if it's a DIY job (which, seriously, it shouldn't be. You could get someone killed).
Also the modern panels tend to produce more power per square foot than panels made just a year or two ago. And they often come with a warranty between 25 and 40 years which you won't get secondhand.
I could see a certified refurbished market someday but secondhand panels are hard to sell. When I've bought them I've paid about ten bucks or so (and that was just for hobby projects - the ones on the roof of my house? Bought those ones new).
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“Bad operators have left many people with broken systems and a bitter taste in their mouth,” says Daniel Liu, head of asset commercial performance at Wood Mackenzie, an energy research firm.
These cases are important to consider amidst the growing interest in rooftop solar, prompted by big incentives in the IRA and volatile energy prices that are leading people to want to have more control over the cost of their own power.
What’s more, it’s expensive to send a truck to repair rooftop solar panels because electricians have been in high demand and because a company’s clients may be spread out across a metropolitan area, requiring technicians to spend a lot of time in transit.
Even if solar leases are not as popular as they once were, the last decade has seen an explosion of the as-a-service model, where customers don’t own things like software or music or even homes but instead pay a monthly fee.
The adopters of rooftop solar today may have fewer problems than the customers of the last decade; more people are now buying their systems outright, rather than leasing them, and the rise of battery storage has enabled homeowners to use more of the energy their panels generate, saving more money.
That doesn’t solve the problem that I and many others are facing—we can’t sign up for new solar systems or take advantage of new tax credits because we’re already stuck with older panels on our homes that are owned by companies that don’t seem to want to maintain them.
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