They've got 20yr warranties, and require zero maintenance where I live. If you have more rain/snow than I get, or perhaps salt spray etc, you may need to do some cleaning.

Once every few months the monitoring doohickey needs a reboot, but the panels work with or without that.

For my personal situation, unless PG&E reduces their power rates over the next 5 years, I'll absolutely hit that break-even point.

Panel production will degrade over time - the warranty covers something like 3% the first year, and 1% every year after that. So at 5 years I will have less than an 8% reduction in output from the panels. That 8% will be made up by that time with LED bulbs, a variable speed pool pump, etc. Heck, right now out of the ~30 ceiling cans in my house, only my office (4) and front porch (3) are LED. The rest are full 60W sucking incandescent bulbs. The chandeliers are also 60W bulbs too, accounting for another dozen or so lights that are on quite frequently.

What can I say - my wife hates CFLs and barely tolerates LEDs.