A recent article by Martin Holladay on Green Building Advisor highlighted an interesting question. How long will solar panels continue to produce electricity once installed? Holladay recently took a 30-year old solar panel off of his roof in Vermont to test how it performs after all those years of service. The results were surprising. After 30 years of being exposed to the elements, the panel is still performing at the factory specifications.

Most solar panels carry a warranty of 25 years and as a result, when people talk about the financial viability of a home solar power system they usually use this time frame to calculate whether solar is a good investment. But what if solar panels kept producing free electricity for another 10 or 15 years, would that make people more inclined to install a solar power system?

I’d be interested to hear from people, who have installed solar on their home, about what lifetime they were expecting when they went solar.

Reprinted with permission from Residential Solar 101