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by kragen 456 days ago
They are conventionally warranted for 20 years, but that's just a guarantee they won't lose more than 20% from their nominal capacity over that time period. Silicon PV (the kind that dominates the market currently) continues to produce after that, continuing to degrade, but more slowly than in the first decade after installation. Many of the PV panels produced in the 01970s still work today.

So embargoing or blockading PV exports to the US would be a threat that the US might start to produce less energy 20 or 30 years in the future. This is very different from the situation with oil, where the Strategic Petroleum Reserve contains 19 days of petroleum consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_(U....

20 years versus 19 days is a significant difference, I feel. 20 years would be long enough for a functioning country to develop a solar-module industry from scratch, though the US probably couldn't. Think about the state of the Chinese PV industry 20 years ago, for example.
1 comments
JumpCrisscross 456 days ago
> embargoing or blockading PV exports to the US would be a threat that the US might start to produce less energy 20 or 30 years in the future

It means you can't replace panels destroyed and can't grow your energy production. If one side can and the other can't, that's a major problem.

> 20 years would be long enough for a functioning country to develop a solar-module industry from scratch

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best is today. We're twenty years ago.

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Jtsummers 456 days ago
kragen's point is that worrying about solar panel embargos is unreasonable given the duration that panels last. An oil embargo is much more impactful to the US. A 6 month oil embargo would significantly harm the US despite our diversified energy infrastructure. A 6 month solar panel embargo wouldn't be a blip even if we were getting 100% of our energy from solar (+ battery storage, presumably). The panels we have will still be working. For it to be impactful:

1. The embargo would have to last decades.

2. The US would have to sit on its hands for those decades and deliberately choose not to develop its own manufacturing capability.

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JumpCrisscross 456 days ago
> worrying about solar panel embargos is unreasonable given the duration that panels last. An oil embargo is much more impactful to the US

An oil embarge is absolutely more impactful than a PV embargo. That doesn't mean the latter isn't a problem.

> embargo would have to last decades.

My point is it wouldn't. An embargo would immediately limit America's ability to grow its energy base and replace e.g. panels destroyed closer to China (or hell, on the homeland through presumably sabotage). If you're at war and your energy is capped while your enemy's isn't, that's a strategic problem. Waiting for that predictable problem to manifest versus cauterising it today is madness.

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