Re:Solar is winning the energy race
by patall on Sunday March 29, 2026 @07:17AM
(#47562178)
Why is that always posted without stating the magnitude of the effect? The numbers that you find online are around 15% relative loss at 60°C vs. 25°C panel temperatur (I remember a HN comment reporting 12% comparing peak April to peak July). That is significant, but not world changing, especially for AC.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
What about panel degradation?
There are 30 year old still functioning panels in Australia.
Buried in that longevity, is an observation that a fifth of panels degrade faster than expected
The long tail appears on graphs showing the degradation rate per year of the panels, indicating that up to 20% of all samples perform 1.5 times worse than the average.
and discussion: Maximising time in the sun: how to maintain and repair solar panels to make them last (2026) - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/13/maxim...
This is more about the lifetime of many PV panels in Australia (temps to 45 C so far) not specifically about PV panels with many hours at > 50 C.
Re:Solar is winning the energy race
by mixermachine on Sunday March 29, 2026 @03:19PM
(#47566251)
It exists and does degrade panels but the time horizon is pretty wide. Real world data shows something like 0.5% to 0.7% degregation per year on average.
At the start the degregation is higher and but it slows down with age.
So a 20 year old panel might be at around 80% in the worst case. Often they are in much better shape. This seems like a pretty good deal to me.