PV Generation - 15 years

The PV panels installed on my roof have now been running for 15 years; switched on 9th December 2005. Apart from an inverter failure in 2015, that took 6 months to fix, the system has been maintenance-free. Annual PV generation (kWh) is shown graphically below.

I would expect an reduction in annual electricity production with time as the efficiency of the PV panels decreases with age. This loss in efficiency has been offset by an increase in sunshine hours, especially in the summer months. More details on this in a later post.

The carbon intensity of UK grid power is about 500g/kWh. Solar PV has a carbon intensity of about 50g/kWh which includes embedded carbon intensity (i.e. mining, manufacture, installation, etc). Over the 15 year operational time period, my solar PV has generated 58,300 kWh which equates to 26 metric tonnes of CO2 mitigation (about 7 metric tonnes of carbon).