Blast from the past, antiques roadshow PV ;-)

Energetic · Dec 12, 2012

Anyone been doing PV for ten years? I have a local PV pioneer concerned about the output of his system installed in 2004 by a long defunct company.

It appears to have dropped 20% output since installation. The panel tiles are Photowatt who have been taken over by our old friends at EDF but who currently don't seem to have a website up and running. I'v filled out a form in something approximating French but wouldn't be surprised if i never hear back as i may have actually written something quite insulting, so thought i would try here also.

[ElectriciansForums.net] Blast from the past, antiques roadshow PV ;-)

There doesn't seem to be any diodes to fail so my initial thought are that it's just degradation of the cells, the inverter is a Fronius IG20 (shows how long they've been around) Any ideas or data on the tiles would be mostly appreciated.

FB. · Dec 12, 2012

Has the system really dropped as much as thought, or was it the very sunless year just past which made a normal and expected gradual loss of output (say 0.5-1% per year) suddenly seem much worse?
Have some nearby buildings or trees appeared since installation to cause some blocking of what little sunshine we've actually seen in 2012?

Energetic · Dec 13, 2012

FB. said:
Has the system really dropped as much as thought, or was it the very sunless year just past which made a normal and expected gradual loss of output (say 0.5-1% per year) suddenly seem much worse?
Have some nearby buildings or trees appeared since installation to cause some blocking of what little sunshine we've actually seen in 2012?

Not from what he's told me.

Has anyone got any data on the tiles or has anyone got experience of this generation of poly cells and their degradation levels?

Having done some more digging there is a chimney that shades some part of the array so my current thinking is that the lack of diodes coupled with the shading has led to accelerated degradation due to reverse current and/or hot spots.

prviet · May 10, 2023

I am learning about this device, is it easy to replace antiques roadshow PV? Because if the equipment is too old, it is difficult to find replacement parts.

littlespark · May 10, 2023

Click here to prove you’re not a robot….

DPG · May 10, 2023

littlespark said:
Click here to prove you’re not a robot….

Do robots watch the antiques roadshow?

littlespark · May 10, 2023

DPG said:
Do robots watch the antiques roadshow?

Just really really old ones…. Like Metal Mickey or Twiki

Energetic · May 23, 2023

This thread now qualifies as Antiques Roadshow...

Been a while, how are we all?

DPG · May 23, 2023

Energetic said:
This thread now qualifies as Antiques Roadshow...

Been a while, how are we all?

I'm ok. The others are all weird.

Energetic · May 23, 2023

Odd this should come up, I'm considering getting back into commercial installations after contracting in solar farms since 2017...

I learned a lot here back in the day...