Governments and insurance companies are scrambling with solar power actuarial tables that are far outside what rosy marketing estimates claimed would result.

Because enginees and scientists were ignored - unless they were advocates for the solar panel industry. Engineers not allowed to have input were concerned about “right skewed degradation with a long fat tail” and real-world usage shows almost 10% of solar panels may not even last 11 years, much less than 25 to 35 governments spending trillions of dollars of our money assured us.

Believing in 25 much less 35 required Hollywood movie time travel suspension of disbelief anyway, since no solar panels that old are still working, but politicians are salespeople first, and 44 percent of people will believe anything they are told and repeat it.

An analysis of 11,000 solar panel projects shows the worrisome truth - a strange "failure bump" that is happening regardless of the weather and temperature and everything else that might be external factors. They are just...failing. At a rate double what they should be degrading.



A one percent degradation is built into models and four percent is enough of an outlier it can be dismissed as statistical noise. It is the two percent per year that is far higher than should be that must concern taxpayers who are paying 100 percent more for 20 percent less electricity but being assured that "capacity" is up 300 percent so it will be fine.