There’s a typo in the title. If you go back to the original source (in french), they actually retain 79,5 % of their original efficiency, so even better than the article’s title would have you believe.
I guess we can blame the French’s confusing number system for that.
People seem to be angry at you for not knowing how the French count. My condolences. I found it funny tho. Have un upvote
Well, I DO know how the French count and compared to English it IS highly confusing. You can hardly convince me that saying “Four times twenty and ten” is as straight forward as saying “Nine tens”.
And just to be clear: I’m not some Yankee or Brit with a superiority complex, no, I am German, and we have our own shitty version of this: Instead of moving along the digits from highest to lowest, as in “Four hundreds and two tens and nine”, we do “Four hundred and nine and two tens”.
Wow, it’s like US uses metric system for counting and y’all do “imperial counting”
It indeed is.
And don’t even get started with Danish.
What the hell is wrong with y’all?
It supposedly comes from originaly counting in base 20 ( a.k.a : vigesimal system) in some proto-european language. There are traces of it in breton, albanese, basque and danish for example. Even in english, there is a reminiscence of vigesimal, in the “score”, see for example Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address “Fourscore and seven years ago…” means 87 years ago.
But Basque isnt an Indo-European language its a Paleo-European isolate. Cultural mixing not with standing.
It’s less confusing if you think of 70 and 90 as separate words without trying to analyze what their constituting words mean.
But etymologically, sure, it makes no sense.
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The dude was saying people are angry at you because they don’t understand, not that you dont understand.
Instead of moving along the digits from highest to lowest, as in “Four hundreds and two tens and nine”, we do “Four hundred and nine and two tens”.
English is less consistent, going from nine-teen to twenty-one. German stays consistent with its lower two digits.
Soixante-quinze virgule neuf vs soixante-dix-neuf virgule cinq.
Easy peasy!
Edit: it wasn’t easy peasy.
Cinq
Ouch lol yeah thanks.
That was close enough!
I wish I could give fourtwentytennine upvotes to help
It supposedly comes from originaly counting in base 20 ( a.k.a : vigesimal system) in some proto-european language. There are traces of it in breton, albanese, basque and danish for example. Even in english, there is a reminiscence of vigesimal, in the “score”, see for example Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address which famously starts with : “Fourscore and seven years ago…”, meaning 87 years ago.
As a frenchman who always found quatre-vingt weird but never bothered to find out why, thanks :)
Mais je t’en prie :)
In English is this why we say fifteen instead of tentyfive?
No you can’t, because the source has written it in the usual hindu-arabic numerals as 79,5 and not as “soixante-dix-neuf virgule cinq”, you don’t need to pronounce the numerals to copy them.
It’s still a good joke!
Yes but is that the average panel, oraverage of still a working panels?
Careful using the word efficiency there, as it has a different meaning when talking about solar panels - it indicates how much energy the panel can extract from the light hitting it. The best modern panels you can buy are below 25% efficient, and since these are from the 90s they were probably about half that when new.
Wow, imagine where we’d be if Oil and Gas hadn’t convinced almost everyone that solar was never going to work well.
Imagine where we’d be if people didn’t automatically think nuclear power=Homer Simpson
Not Chernobyl?
That too along with 3MI, and decades of negative propaganda from the fossil fuel industry.
The two nearest nuclear plants to me both had to do serious cleanup after problems were discovered, it’s not just the list of big problems people worry about - especially when the nuclear lobby say things like ‘they’re safe as long as they’re run properly and no one cuts corners, but please don’t regulated them properly or they won’t be cost effective’
Rich people stand to make a monopoly if we’re all dependent on nuclear and they can’t have that monopoly with solar and wind - maybe it’s time to accept a lot of pro nuclear talking points come financially interested parties too.
Imagine where we’d be if leftists embraced nuclear power instead of killing it off everywhere they could.
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basically exactly the same situation as we’re in now
You think if we take away 50 years of burning fossil fuels we’d be in “the same situation as we’re in now”?? Wtf are you smoking?
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As if it’s fucking green activists blocking nuclear and not the fossil fuel lobby
It literally is, though I suspect the greens are the useful stooges of the fossil fuel propaganda.
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So I quoted this sentence:
As if it’s fucking green activists blocking nuclear and not the fossil fuel lobby
And then you started talking a bunch of blah blah about renewables, which I will note is NOT in that sentence.
And you did not mention nuclear, which I will note is the entire SUBJECT of that sentence.
No, because until we solve the storage issues with electricity. You need a reliable baseline power source in the grid. Solar has 0% cost effectiveness at night. Nuclear is 100 times more environmentally friendly than coal. Even with the long term waste storage issues.
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Hydroelectric plants, batteries, generation on site, wave power, geothermal, … There are lots of ways to reduce the need of non renewable energy.
Here in Italy, the only parties that seem to be favorable to nuclear are right-wing.
And of course, they got elected and didn’t actually do anything towards it.
Never trust right-wingers to do literally anything.
If a right wing party promises to take all the money from the rich and redistribute it to the poor, they’re lying.
If a right wing party promises to invest in public transit, they’re lying.
If a right wing party promises to pass a law enshrining LGBTQ rights, they’re lying.
They’re just a bunch of fucking liars, all they exist for is to make rich people richer.
Oh, I trust them to do everything I wouldn’t like them to do.
For example, so far they’ve been following through with removing LGBTQ rights and lowering taxes for the rich, just as they promised.
I’d like to specifically blame the vocal greens and not left or center left people in general.
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I thought that solar panels that old performed much worse or stopped working. Especially considering where the tech was in the 1990s.
I thought that solar panels that old performed much worse or stopped working. Especially considering where the tech was in the 1990s.
“performed much worse” is compared to today’s manufactured panels. As an example, a 100w panel in 1992 was likely around 12% efficient. This means “of all the light energy hitting the full panel under perfect light and temperature conditions”, 12% of that energy is converted to electricity and would produce 100w. Compare this to a middle-of-the-road panel you’d buy for your house today the efficiency is 21%. Both the old and the new panel’s efficiency will go down over the years.
What the article is talking about is how much of the original efficiency is retained over the years in real world tests. Lets say we have a 1992 100w panel from my example above at 12% efficiency. That means under the best possible conditions it would generate 100w. Because of age, the article notes that efficiency has degrade to produce 79.5% of its original rating. Meaning this 1992 100w panel today would generate 79.5w. That’s still pretty darn good and useful!
Great explanation.
One other point I see I left out was physical size of panel as related to efficiency of converting light to electricity and the reason that 2024’s 22% efficiency is so important over 1992’s 12%. The 2024 100w panel will be about half the size of the 1992 100w panel. This is important because space to put panels (and cost per panel) are large factors in being able to install solar. So you’d be able to install many more 2024 100w panels in the same space as 1992 100w panels.
There is a solar plant in switzerland that still has functioning panels from the early 80s.
E: Oh, the one I thought of was mentioned in the article already.
It’s funny how all the FUD idiots say that solar panels will wind up in the landfill and shit like that
It’s a stupid argument against solar power, but it is a legitimate argument against cheap and poorly-constructed solar panels that do not have the same longevity as the ones built in the 90s.
Is there a problem with the market being flooded with cheap not very good solar panels? Every single panel I looked at to put on my roof have all been of the highest quality I’ve not seen anyone try and hawk anything substandard.
Unless of course they’re lying about what panels they’re using but realistically I can’t see that lasting for very long.
Yes, we do have that problem, but it’s not the panels anyone puts on a roof. It’s the cheap plastic shit manufacturers put on disposable consumer devices like pathway lighting or portable chargers.
I wouldn’t put that cheap shit on my roof, but as solar adoption increases, capitalists are gonna capitalize.
Just read to the top comment saying it’s profitable to replace them anyway.
And then the top comment to THAT comment wondering where and how to buy the still-effective replaced ones.
Just buy more and put them next to it lmao.
That makes sense, but I guess the problem is that they take up a lot of space.
The weird thing is that in this scenario these panels are still applicable for replacement probably because the the solar panels of today compared to then are about ~40% more efficient. So compared to a new replacement it’s at around 60% efficiency. A major site plans profit off of 30 years and plans to replace glass at that time, so while it may still be somewhat useful long term it’s probably more profitable to replace them.
I wonder if this type of economic calculus would mean a supply of inexpensive, second-hand panels might be available in the next few years.
They already are, at least for the smaller ones. You can go to your citie’s parks and recreation department to get some. All those solar panels that power various signs and lights have been collected and replaced for years. I picked up a few years ago in Lexington, KY, for next to nothing, and they worked just fine for the lights that I wanted to power, despite only outputting less than 50% of their original power.
Not sure where you would find the full size ones like these pictured.
I doubt they put out much power at all compared to modern panels. Solar back then was a pipe dream, we didn’t have the battery technology to store the energy and the panels had a lower voltage and could supply less current.
I have a 100w foldable panel for camping that at >= 20% efficiency is probably double what the 90s panels could do.
In the 90s, rooftop solar was around 10-15% efficient. Now rooftop panels are closer to 20%.
A major source of calculator power!
Oh yeah, how about coal? Does that get any less efficient over time? Exactly. I’ve been burning the same lump of coal for easily the same amount of time and it remains 100% efficient, that’s the beauty of combustible fuel.
/s I’m assuming.
I’m not familiar with that letter.
Assuming you’re asking in good faith, the “/s” is usually added to denote sarcasm online.
Photo?
That is a very neat bow 😄
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
I’m getting some new panels installed this year, and I think they’re suggesting they’ll be at 80% after 25 years.
It looks like there is disagreement between the title and content of the article. Title says 75.9, content says 79.5
Either way, does this suggest that new panels might do better than expected over a 30 year timespan?
To give you an idea, my 12-panel PV system installed in 2011 has put out 3.5 MWh per year at its peak and now produces between 3.1 and 3.3 MWh yearly, depending on the weather.
Newer panels are generally much more efficient and produce more electricity compared to old panels.
The 80% after 25 years might be their warranty, my panels have a similar warranty on them. If they start producing less than 80% of their original output before 25 years, the manufacturer will replace them (or something like that).
Yes, I’m looking at the paperwork and I’m realizing that you’re right, 80% at 25 is the warranty guarantee, so I’m guessing they’re confident it’ll typically be much better than 80 at 25
Probably like tire warranties: prorated for expected life, and not including installation cost
What’s not included in the article is how much additional power might be produced by replacing them with newer systems.
Sure but you also haven’t lost any of the power that wasn’t generated by them being dead/broken
Also I don’t think we’ve really run out of suitable space to install new panels. If that ever happens it might be worthwhile to replace them, but as you said we can otherwise just run them alongside new installations until they break or maintenance costs surpass their profits
A significant portion of the cost of solar, is the installation costs. There’s not much you can do about how much work goes into installing panels, and this will get more expensive over time as wages rise. A more efficient panel means less to install, bringing down that installation cost
I don’t yet have solar panels so am not sure what they’d do, but at least half of my south facing roof is always shaded. Is the remaining half the roof sufficient space? I don’t know, but panel size is critical.
What you are not considering is that silicon crystallisation and the PV panel manufacturing process in its entirety are very resource-intensive and energy-intensive. The longevity of solar panels is one of their core properties that contribute to their high degree of sustainability.
Fortunately and unfortunately, there have been so many changes and breakthroughs on solar power over the last 50 years that this doesn’t really tell us much about current technology.
This is gonna sound so dumb… But they had solar panels back then?!
Carter called for solar panels to be installed on the White House in 1979. Modern ones are probably way more efficient but they were definitely a thing.
Jesus Christ. Look, back in the Stone Age when I went to school the coolest calculator was the TI-36 Solar. It was already that mundane.
Naturally, I used a non-solar Casio, because I wasn’t one of the cool nerds.
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