[inglor_cz]

The not-so-tiny negative that some professionals here in CZ mention is disreputable Chinese vendors.

"Oh yeah, we will give you 10 years warranty for your panels, buy! Cheap!"

Only the necessary seals are shoddy and the panel dies much sooner from water incursion. At which moment you find out that the producer has gone out of business, so no recourse.

This is not a fault of the technology per se, rather of humanity as usual, but I can see why several such incidents in your proximity will cause distrust.

The solution would be "buy from reputable vendors only", but IDK how many Chinese vendors are reputable and if they didn't decide to entshittify their products right now.

[hef19898]

The list of top ten solar pnel vendors / brands is one online search away, e.g. here:

https://solarpowernerd.com/top-solar-panel-manufacturers/

Buy from a "bankable" brand, and you are good to go. Bankable, as in bank are willing ot finance GWp sized utility projects using modules from those manufacturers. And as you see, those big ones are around for quite a while.

Sure, I have never seen an industry as plagued by shady people and practices as solar module importers in the EU (they literally smuggled them at scale sometimes to circumvent import tariffs and taxes), but the big mabufacturers are, and have to be, serious and reliable. Otherwise they'd be out of the GW scale project market, which is where they make their money and sales volumes.

[inglor_cz]

Thank you. I have been considering solar for my home too, but this problem is making me hesitate; the investment is still considerable, at least for me at this moment.

[hef19898]

Yeah, I know. Guess why we din't have it yet. With larger projects, the labor costs decrease per Wp installed, making larger projects cheaper per Wp, and thus the ROI is much better.

One should not save money on cheap panels so. Neither shoupd you import yourself, only buy from brands that have an EU legal presence, import themselves and are in the business for decades (JA, Jinko, Trina and Canadian Solar come to mind). If the brand has some large utility projects runnning (either their own as suppliers, doesn't really matter) even better, that means they have contractual agreents with large, repeat customers, basically assuring support for guarantee cases down the road. Be mindful so, not all are very customer friendly when it comes to claims, so take one with a solid startegy for the roof top / consumer market.

I spent some time at one of those mentioned, years ago.

The ROI for private installation gets better all the time so, Wp prices fall, panel capacity increases, resulting in cheaper and larger installations on the same surface. No idea whwre labour is nowadays, propably through the roof with availability in 2030s or so.