Solar Panels: Is There a Quality Problem?

Solar energy seems like the perfect solution: cheap and boundless.  You get all the energy you need for free - barring the initial investment for the installation -  and added bonus, it's all done at no damage to the environment. 

But there's a catch: quality could be a problem. 

Worrying news of failure of solar panels are seeping out of the United States, I say "seeping out" because the news are still few and far between: see the articles below that I was able to pick off the Internet. A fire was reported at a highschool in St Louis (Mo) last month, and when this happens there is always someone else ready to advise how this could have been avoided.

The problem is that such events are happening more often as more solar panels are installed. How safe and how effective are solar panels?

No one knows.The furor around solar panels started three days ago in reaction to a New York Times investigation published on May 28 (to read it, click here). The NYT article highlighted a particularly grievous event in Los Angeles where a large rooftop installation guaranteed to last 25 years failed after only two years due to a defective outer coating while other defects caused a fire that took the panels off line for two years.

Why this "rash of defective panels"? It appears to have been caused by competitive pressure - especially from the low-cost Chinese solar panels - as American producers sought to cut costs by resorting to cheaper materials, compromising the longevity of their products.  

That's free competition for you! In an unregulated market, the only way producers can defend themselves is by resorting to cost-cutting - at the expense of quality of course.

As the NYT reporter Todd Woody writes, "Worldwide, testing labs, developers, financiers and insurers are reporting similar problems and say the $77 billion solar industry is facing a quality crisis just as solar panels are on the verge of widespread adoption."

No one is sure how widespread the problem really is, there are no reliable industry-wide figures about defective solar panels. And as pointed out in the NYT, "when defects are discovered, confidentiality agreements often keep the manufacturer’s identity secret, making accountability in the industry all the more difficult."

The solution? An overseeing independent institution to hold solar panel manufacturers accountable. Such an institution would deliver certificates guaranteeing the quality of the products. This is standard in many industries (especially food industries), why not solar panels?

Manufacturers might initially object and see that as curtailment of their freedom but in fact it would help them, weeding out the dishonest producers. Furthermore, certificates could provide a classification, giving a triple A to the highest quality and a C to the lowest, so that you would know as a consumer what you are getting.

Both the European Union and the United States have the appropriate institutions that could do this. What's required is a Food and Drug Administration approach to industry, in particular to regulate the quality of new technologies.

What is your opinion, any advice?
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Comments

Jack Durish said…
Ah, the Siren's call of green energy. Have you seen the videos of windmills catching fire. It seems that there is no lubricant known to man that can help the bearings on those giant turbines spin freely. Solar panels are too inefficient. An engineer explained the problem to me like this: Imagine mixing a drop of ink into a bucket of water. Now try imagining extracting that drop of ink from the water. Sunlight is similarly diluted. And, no green energy system has proven viable without heavy government subsidies. In a word, green energy is not sustainable. There are improvements coming. An ingenious micro-mirror could concentrate sunlight on the silicon cell that converts it to electricity, but no one has figured out how to manufacture them economically. (I would hold off on the investment until that's available)

Jack, thanks for the comment. But that's not quite the theme of this article. Besides the cost-energy produced ratio being low is not really the issue either - not from an economic point of view. The real problem is elsewhere: with the rise in oil prices, it has become economical to go into fracking as a way to extract oil. With untold long-run damage to the environment, the sort of damage that is very hard to evaluate in money terms. So we're not finished yet on this one particular debate. The big advantage of green energy is just that: it's green, it implies minimum damage to the environment.

But I agree with you: in America, there appears to be very little concern for damage to the environment, there's much more widespread concern to keep the oil flowing at competitive prices and in a cost-efficient way because that is perceived as the most rational way to proceed...
Jack Durish said…
Well, take heart. President Obama promised when he was a candidate, that he would make alternative energy more economical by raising the price of gas to $8/gallon. He made it half way there in his first term. Maybe he'll complete the job by the end of his second and solar power will be more marketable.

Fracking? I've seen arguments both ways. Yes, it can be very harmful to the environment and it can be safe if it is properly regulated. Of course, you need some competent law enforcement for that to happen. If delivered without destroying the environment, the benefits are huge. America could supply enough natural gas to replace coal and oil fired furnaces now generating electricity. This would greatly reduce the environmental harm of those plants and lower the cost of electricity. America would then have adequate supplies to send to other parts of the world. We seemed to be blessed with a lot of the stuff.

Unfortunately, anti-fracking groups don't seem willing to work out the problems. They don't seem to care about the potential benefit. There noses are pointed squarely on high priced gas to make poor resources like wind and solar "economical" when, in fact, they will never be economical, not at any price.
Wind and solar, in due course, WILL become economical with technological improvements that cannot fail to happen because they always happen - I am a great believer in man's capacity to innovate and invent the future -. Aren't you?

...so I agree with everything you say except your last 6 words!
solar energy has been considered as one of the renewable sources of energy.. but there is lot of progress yet to be done to harness it completely. It was nice coming across the post. Thanks for sharing such informative stuff. 

Solar And Green said…
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Unknown said…
If you are going to buy yourself the best solar panels out there in the market, make sure that it's the genuine one. Ask some people who have used it. There are lots of solar panels out there that aren't quality made.