Today was bright, cold and sunny... a perfect day for PV testing, so since I was at a customers house doing some other system maintenance, I did a simple in circuit test of the system's modules today One by one I covered individual modules with a piece of cardboard while the customer recorded the before and after incoming series amperage.
Out of the array's 10 MSX-60's there were 2 bad ones... (I've had 3 others fail in this same system about 5 years ago). The failure characteristics are as follows: In circuit testing (series current) shows their contribution is negligible... maybe .2 amps. If you take off the junction box cover, and remove the module from the circuit and test short circuit current, suddenly the module starts working again, even if you reconnect it back in circuit. BUT after a day or two it will become "lazy" and stop producing power again.
2 weeks before the end of 2000 I did a similar (cardboard cover) test of my personal systems 12 MSX-60's and found 2 with weak (31 watts) output... I sent them in for "evaluation" and learned today that they would be replaced at no charge. As they were 1990 panels and the 10 year warranty was 2 weeks from being over, this was a nearly too late time to catch them.
These are the umpteenth Solarex MSX-60 modules I have seen go bad and I am wondering how many other of these are out there taking up valuable real estate and producing nothing. Maybe I did a whole lot of installs during a period of "bad manufacturing runs" but the widely varying manufacturing dates I see on these bad modules makes me wonder...
Here are the serial numbers for these 2 panels with the intermittent
output:
FW92G29328531 (1992)
FW96D08704300 (1996)
Here are the serial numbers for the 2 on my home system that had weak
output:
FT90H31194860 (1990)
FW93G23410856 (1993)
Of my home systems original 12 white backed modules my Solarex wrack now sports 7 blue backed ones... so that is a dismal failure rate of 58%.
I am curious if this is a unique "quality" of Solarex panels or if others have had similar failures of different manufacturers of PV's. I realize they do a whole lot of thermal cycling, but if my personal experience is anything close to a random sampling of what it normal for the industry... this is NOT good.
Since Solarex isn't willing to release data on the failure rates or serial numbers of failed panels maybe we should get a wrench database going from our personal experiences. Either way... a word to the rest of the wrench list... if you have any customers or know of anyone that has Solarex MSX-60 panels, have them test their output. These things seem like they are very prone to failure.
Todd Cory
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