this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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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?
About 4.5 billion years.
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.
"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.