{"id":23791,"date":"2018-09-04T08:21:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T21:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/?p=23791"},"modified":"2018-09-04T12:21:43","modified_gmt":"2018-09-04T01:51:43","slug":"tindo-solar-panel-reliability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/tindo-solar-panel-reliability\/","title":{"rendered":"Tindo Solar Claim Spectacular Reliability: 3 Failures From 240,000 Sold"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lots Of Good News About Tindo Solar – Including An Annual Failure Rate As Low As 1 In 200,000 Panels<\/p><\/div>\n

If you are in the market for some Australian made solar panels then I have great news for you.\u00a0 It involves Tindo Solar<\/a> as they are the only Australian manufacturer of panels.\u00a0 If someone selling any other brand of panels says or suggests they were made in Australia, be super suspicious about that.<\/p>\n

The news I have is so good it’s actually multitudinous1<\/a><\/sup> and I am going to lay it on you in six parts:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Around three months ago Tindo Solar began selling higher efficiency\u00a0monocrystalline<\/a> solar panels using PERC technology.<\/li>\n
  2. At the same time they increased their product warranty from 10 to 12 years.<\/li>\n
  3. You can now get a 25 year product warranty for panels bought direct from Tindo (or one of their authorized resellers) if Solar Analytics monitoring is installed.<\/li>\n
  4. A high efficiency 300 watt PERC panel will be available soon.<\/li>\n
  5. Tindo Solar did well in a recent Choice Magazine test of 11 panels, coming equal first with three others.<\/li>\n
  6. Nearly quarter of a million solar Tindo Solar panels have been installed over the past 5 years with only 3 failures so far. \u00a0If my maths is right, this means the annual failure rate for a Tindo panel may only be 1 in 200,000.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Tindo’s low failure rate is impressive and the reason why they can increase their product warranties, so I’ll go into the details of that first.<\/p>\n

    3 Failures Out Of 240,000 panels<\/h2>\n

    Tindo Solar had Dr Andrew Thomson<\/a> of the Australian National University investigate the company’s solar panels’ failure rate.\u00a0 He reported:<\/p>\n

    “After 5 years of production, Tindo\u2019s installed module fleet now numbers approximately 240,000. From the international survey of module failures, we would expect 600 failures would be typical. Tindo has only suffered 3 module faults. The faulty modules were replaced directly at no cost to the customer.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    That’s an excellent result2<\/a><\/sup>.\u00a0 If I assume those 240,000 panels were installed at a constant rate over the five years that means they had only 3 failures in around 600,000 panel-years.\u00a0 This would make their annual failure rate only 1 in 200,000.<\/p>\n

    We Can’t Be Confident About Future Rates Of Failure<\/h2>\n

    While 1 in 200,000 is a very low failure rate it is possible there were some failures Tindo Solar isn’t aware of.\u00a0 People could have let some defective panels slide for some reason even though they were still in warranty.\u00a0 Personally, I’d never let a defective solar panel slide on account of how I want solar panel companies to learn from their mistakes and continuously improve the quality of their panels to ever increasing heights of reliability3<\/a><\/sup>. \u00a0But while it’s possible there were more failures, I am willing to accept there were only a total of 3.<\/p>\n

    Because their failure rate so far is only about 1 in 200,000 per year doesn’t mean this is the failure rate we can expect from now on.\u00a0 We don’t have enough information to conclude this will be their future fail rate.\u00a0 If we had 2.4 million solar panels with 30 failures — 10 times the actual numbers — then we could be more confident in saying, “Yeah, the annual failure rate does look like 1 in 200,000”.\u00a0 However, at the moment we can’t be confident and the future failure rate could be higher or lower.\u00a0 But one thing is certain and that is 3 failures out of 240,000 is a damn good result.<\/p>\n

    The Failure Rate Will Increase As Solar Panels Age<\/h2>\n

    An annual failure rate is 1 in 200,000 thousand doesn’t mean it will stay at that rate as the solar panels age.\u00a0 This is the rate with an average panel age of two and a half years and we can be pretty sure it will be higher when they are 20 years old.\u00a0 But in the short term it may actually improve.\u00a0 This is because some problems will cause a panel to fail while it’s still young.\u00a0 This “bathtub curve” diagram from the wunderbar4<\/a><\/sup> German Fraunhofer Society<\/a> shows how solar panels have a relatively high rate of failure early in life, a long period of low failure rate, and then increasingly fail as they enter old age:<\/p>\n

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    (Image: Fraunhofer)<\/p><\/div>\n

    All Tindo Solar Panels On Your Roof Will Probably Last 25 Years<\/h2>\n

    If we conservatively assume the panel failure rate doesn’t remain low for a long time but instead doubles every 5 years in the following way:<\/p>\n