Comment on Leased Solar Systems Are Failing Across America

db2@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• SupremeFuzzler@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why buy new, when you can just trade it in for a new model in a few millennia? You know a solar system loses 20% of its initial value just by driving it off the lot?

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  • chaogomu@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • jdnewmil@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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      • Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Note to antipodes: you do want to install yours north

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    • db2@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      How much capacity would you say the Milky Way has left then?

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      • chaogomu@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        About 4.5 billion years.

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    • Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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      • abhibeckert@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Some panels are around 90% at 40 years now.

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  • SillyScythe@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    "meanwhile, the amount of energy guaranteed each year lessened as the panels aged. "
    So it is pretty much this except the companies whilst leasing were not maintaining nor do you get to trade in.

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• Kowowow@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Ah so it’s not “leashed solar systems”

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  • db2@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    We’ll blow ourselves up before we get that far though.

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    • Kowowow@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      that actually reminds me of a thing from a scifi book I listened to where they took some low acceleration but powerful planet moving tech and smashed two decently sized planets into the enemies sun from opposite sides, by the time they got the planets to the sun they where moving as close to the speed of light as they could get them so the effect was pretty brutal

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      • db2@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Was it a mass driver?

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• Naja_Kaouthia@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Honestly I was wondering if it would be a better deal than my current apartment lease.

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