When you get solar panels installed on your home, you can be happy knowing that they’ll be producing electricity for decades to come. But just how long is that lifespan?

It is often claimed that a solar panel should last for 25 to 30 years, but this can vary based on its manufacturing, installation, and the maintenance it receives in that time.

This article explains everything you need to know about the real lifespan of solar panels, and offers tips to extend their life expectancy.

When you’re talking with a solar installer or looking at panels online, the typical figure you’ll see given for the lifespan of a solar panel is 25 – 30 years.

But the thing you need to understand what about this is what ‘lifespan’ means in the context of how solar panels work.

Usually, when you talk about the lifespan of a product, it’s how long it’s expected to work for. This is not the case for solar panels.

Solar panels can continue to operate past that 25 – 30 year window. But the degradation they have experienced in that time, and how the technology has improved, means that it could very well be better to just replace them.

If you look after your solar panels, make sure they are in good condition and deal with any issues that arise, they are still going to degrade over time.

This doesn’t mean that they will break, but rather that their power output will be reduced each year.

Look at the specifications for any solar panel, and you should see information telling you how much of their output will be lost in the first year. There should also be an estimate for what they will lose each year thereafter.

If you have bought solar panels that say they’ll experience ~1% degradation in the first year, and 0.4% annual degradation after that, you can guess what their output will be in the future.

In that example, our homeowners’ solar panels should still have roughly 89.4% of their original power output after 25 years in service.

That is completely independent of anything more catastrophic that could cause them to break.

Past that operational lifespan of 25 – 30 years, solar panels may see their rate of degradation and power loss accelerate. This would rapidly reduce their value compared with the years beforehand.

There are a number of factors that can affect the speed at which solar panels degrade. Some of those factors include:

There are multiple manufacturing, environmental, and material factors affecting the lifespan of solar PV panels.

Solar panels come with two warranties essential to maximising their lifespan: a standard product warranty and a performance guarantee.

• Product Warranty: A product warranty covers the materials and manufacturing of the solar panels and states that they will be good for a certain period of time.
• Performance Guarantee: A performance guarantee covers how much power output your solar panels lose, and states that they will retain a certain level of their original performance up to its period of coverage.

If you’re shopping around for solar panels these days, the level of product warranty you should be looking for is 25 – 30 years. This covers the majority of their expected lifespan up to the point where you might be looking for replacements anyway.

A good performance guarantee should promise that a solar panel will retain 87% – 89% of its original electricity output at the end of a 30 year period.

A third warranty, which could significantly affect your solar panels, is the workmanship warranty offered by your solar installer. Typically covering two years, this guarantees that any problem with their installation work is protected in that period.

There are very simple steps anyone can take to ensure that your solar panels last as long as possible, and perform at their best for all that time.

Solar panels aren’t the only part of a solar PV system, and those other components have operational lifespans of their own that you also have to take into account.

A solar inverter is the part of the system that converts the DC electricity made by solar panels into AC power that can be distributed throughout your house.

These inverters typically have a lifespan of 10 – 15 years, though some new higher-end models are now boasting of lifespans of ~ 20 years.

This means that your inverter will need to be replaced at least once during the lifespan of your solar panels.

If you include a solar battery in your home, then its lifespan is measured somewhat differently. Battery lifespans are measured in cycles, the number of times the battery can be fully charged or discharged.

A solar battery should have an estimated lifespan of at least 6,000 cycles, with many batteries now boasting a lifespan of up to 10,000 cycles.