• Question: Are solar panels easy to break and is it hard to repair?

    Asked by emilyszs to Mark, Matthew, Mike, Paul, Sabina on 10 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Sabina Hatch

      Sabina Hatch answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      It depends on the materials, some solar cells are flexible, but bend them too much and they will break. Once the solar cell is broken, it cannot be easily fixed and if it was it wouldn’t work as well as before. Generally they are relatively physically robust.

      However if a solar cell is exposed to concentrated light and it was not made for it, then it would cause irreparable damage. This is because the material used to absorb the sunlight has been chemically damaged.

    • Photo: Paul Coxon

      Paul Coxon answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      Good question!

      The active parts in solar panels which convert light into electricity are very very thin, often only a tiny fraction of a millimetre thick. Conventional solar cells made of silicon are rigid and can break easily

      Manufacturers encase them within sheets of glass to make them stronger. If the glass casing is broken, they’re very difficult to repair. Flexible solar cells are being developed which are stronger, and can be applied to curved surfaces on buildings.

    • Photo: Matthew Malek

      Matthew Malek answered on 10 Mar 2014:

      In principle, traditional solar cells are fairly fragile. However, I’ve worked with quite a few and never broken any — touch wood!

      Some time ago, I worked on the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory in Argentina. The observatory was built on a budget of $50 million. It consisted of two parts, telescopes to watch the cosmic rays in the air and small particle detectors to measure the cosmic ray’s “footprint” on the ground.

      The observatory was built in rural Argentina, in an undeveloped area. This was necessary to get nice dark skies for the telescopes. However, it meant that there was also no electricity! Wiring the particle detectors on the ground into the power grid would have cost $500 million — ten times more than our total budget! We solved the problem by using solar panels for all the particle detectors.

      The laser calibration facility that I built for the observatory was also solar powered. Light (sun) comes in and light (laser) goes out!

    • Photo: Mark Jackson

      Mark Jackson answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      They are easy to repair: I just ask my graduate student to do it.

Comments

  • Photo: Rowena

    Rowena commented on :

    You have to keep solar panels clean otherwise they start working really poorly. There are a couple of kinds of commercial solar panels, one has the electronics build in and one has them wired off elsewhere. This is like parallel or series circuits. In the series one if you break one the whole thing fails, whereas with parallel if you break one just that one fails. Your Christmas lights will be in series or parallel just like this (I have both kinds). The series ones therefore break much more easily, but they are also cheaper and easier to maintain.

    (Colour Zone Scientist, worked at a Renewable Technology Consultancy for a bit)