Engineering360: "PV Systems' Degradation Rates to Be Measured, Publicized"

There is already a lot of data out there on degradation rates. The question is, ''What is actually degrading in the PV and is there any synergism in the over-all degradation rate due to combinations of component degradation?''

Stuff wears out. In the mid to late 1990's bigger, better, etc. was all the rage in the wind power media. Now, the media has morphed into the No. 1 topic being, ''How do we keep all the moving parts of this stuff working properly?'' In PV the media hype still includes efficiency, but is increasingly focused in getting the BOS costs down and keeping the non-moving parts from crapping out for whatever reason. All life time costs are coming down, but the spread between roof top PV and PV farms seems to be growing, with the lowest tariffs for PV farms on the Arabian peninsula coming in under $0.03 per kwhr.