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Comment by Gustomaximus | Hacker News Reader

Also a 20/40 year warranty is what manufactures guarantee.

There is every likeyhood panels guaranteed for 20 years are still in use decade(s) past their warranty.

By year 5 a panel is already down to 95% efficiency. Year 25 is around 80-85%. That may not sound like much but in many environments, that difference is enough to make solar panels not worth keeping. And ask yourself as a consumer if you really think other consumers are going to keep a solar panel because it's "the right thing to do" when they could probably buy and much better solar panel for very cheap at that point in the future. It's like keeping a 15 year old graphics card when you could buy a 5 year old graphics card for $50 and get 100x the performance

It's nothing like the 100x graphics card though, it's the 1.2x graphics card, and perhaps a few percent more for efficiency improvements. If it's down as far as 80% after 25 years, replacing it will net you such a small improvement for such a large amount of work to tear out and replace.

> That may not sound like much but in many environments, that difference is enough to make solar panels not worth keeping

Is this satire? 80% efficiency is definitely still worth keeping around. You may want to replace the panels, but they also recycle well in that case. I'd rather keep around 20-25 year old panels than necessarily have to replace them if I didn't want the cost of a new installation.

Panel installation is not free. Neither are permits and any other part of the process. Things are NOT getting cheaper at this point, they are becoming more expensive (and possibly more capable, but that's debatable). There is no Moore's law for solar.

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