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Comment by cyberpunk | Hacker News Reader

Can you elaborate? Is there a solar farm in prod right now older than 20 years that you know of? Im all for solar, and honestly didn't consider this angle..

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There's a panel in Germany that was in use for 36 years: https://www.presse.uni-oldenburg.de/einblicke/54/files/asset...

Efficiency went from 8.55% to 8.2%

The panels are often warrantied for 20-25 years. Most things outlast their warranty period. Inverters are less reliable, warranties are half that for residential stuff but commercial stuff will come with a service contract. Wires and racks can last quite a long time.

You don’t need anything else (e.g., a river to dump waste heat).

the older inverters tended to die after 10 years. But more recent ones are supposedly better, but they don't exist long enough to really produce statistics.

Is it 12 years? 15? 20? no one knows. But since most warranties are 10 years, its safe to assume they easily get there, or it would become too expensive for the manufacturer

The main reason why solar farms are replaced before 20 years are up is because modern panels are much more efficient than they were 20 years ago. By replacing the panels you can get 2-4x as much power in the same footprint and using the same infrastructure.

So you don't _have_ to replace everything. But there's a compelling economic argument in upgrading the components in the Solar array as better ones become available.

I guess you don't need permits for upgrading to newer components.

Eventually this pressure will go away though, as panels can only get so efficient. Future generations of panels are unlikely to make such big improvements.

And because thus is an economic pressure/incentive, its really the opposite of what the original quote was suggesting. In 20 years we throw it all away because there has been amazing improvements doesn't gel well with their "this will last 60 years" statement.

Wouldn't it be more cost-effective to put up the new panels somewhere else? Are panel costs such a negligible part of solar farm costs that expending doesn't make sense?

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