Overview:
Life span of solar panel is statistical measure of percentage of power generated over years against the rated power of the panel. Usually it is measured in years. General rule is solar panel will degrade at rate 0.5 to 1 percent a year. To work efficiently it has to produce at least 80% of the rated power. Hence, one can consider life span to be above 20 years considering the degradation percentage. Example: Consider a solar panel of rated power 100 Watt. Hence, to work efficiently it needs to generate at least 80 Watt. Below we shall calculate with various degradation percentage. Formula for calculation: Efficiency = Watt - Watt * Degradation Percentage / 100 Life Span for Solar Panel with degradation rate of 0.5 %, 0.8% and 1 % considering solar panel Watt = 100Years | Rate | Efficiency | Rate | Efficiency | Rate | Efficiency |
1 |
0.5 | 100 | 0.8 | 100 | 1 | 100 |
5 | 0.5 | 98.5 | 0.8 | 97.6 | 1 | 6 |
10 | 0.5 | 96 | 0.8 | 93.8 | 1 | 91 |
15 | 0.5 | 93.5 | 0.8 | 90.1 | 1 | 86 |
20 | 0.5 | 91 | 0.8 | 86.4 | 1 | 81 |
25 | 0.5 | 88.5 | 0.8 | 83.1 | 1 |
76 |