1092
Solar modules deployed in France in 1992 still provide 75.9% of original output power
(www.pv-magazine.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
1092 points (99.7% liked)
Technology
60070 readers
3537 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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