Everyone is talking about maintenance ITT. Is it that big of a concern? My parents have had solar on their roof for almost 10 years now with zero issues. I imagine newer panels last longer.

So what's the actual maintenance cost? I could imagine it's going to be cheaper to just install new panels every few decades than constantly maintaining the installation to be 100% capacity.

For a grid scale installation, let’s say 5% of panels are dead due to whatever failure. I am not sure the rational response would be to do any maintenance vs installing more capacity. Twenty years later rip out all of the old panels, replace with new. Repeat forever.

They use a robot for regular cleaning; looks like the design will make that cheaper too as it's basically a fancy Roomba.

Replacing might be cheaper as well without any mounting racks or tracks.