Warranty and Performance Guarantee Info

[mpkelley20]

Eevrytime I meet with a new installer they discuss their warranties or performance guarantees. reading thorugh these forums I am seeing more and more about how these really mean nothing over the long run (10 year vs 20 year) as things usually go wrong soon after installations. But I have a bunch of questions surrounding what I;ve been told vs. what I see in the fine print

1. Warranties - "free from defect" - Some panels offer 10 years. Others 25 years. I assume free from defect would be one of thos items that pop up pretty quickly after installation. Correct?

2. Warranties - Damage - Solar City says any damage caused by snow/ice/wind/trees would be covered. Things like rocks being thrown would not be covered. SunPower says basically the same thing but my installer excluded trees (said that was covered under homeowners insurance). When I read the SunPower warranty, the term "act of God" was used as an exclusion. Isn't snow/ice/wind all acts of God? So are these really covered by most manufacturers or now? I live in the Northeast and we had about 10 feet of snow last year. Lots of people around me with Solar City had damged panels. they were replaced...no questions asked.

3. Performance gurantees - It seems that most will guarantee that panels are performing within spec. They don;t guarantee producttion as that varies based on weather. Some (Solar City) would guarantee output (this is on a purchased system, not a lease). Their contract specifically states the per kwh charge that I would be reimbursed for if the system does not generate the anticpated output. The rate is less than my current total cost per kwh but it covers about half (supply cost, not the delievery cost). Does any other panel offer that or is that guarantee a bunch of BS?

4. What happens if the company who maade my panels goes under? Is the warranty gone or does it transfer somewhere else?


I'm sure these have been asked before but my search for "waaranties" pulled up every single thread. Was hoping to get these questions in a single threas. If there is one already established, please link it for me if you can.

Thanks!

[lkruper]

Eevrytime I meet with a new installer they discuss their warranties or performance guarantees. reading thorugh these forums I am seeing more and more about how these really mean nothing over the long run (10 year vs 20 year) as things usually go wrong soon after installations. But I have a bunch of questions surrounding what I;ve been told vs. what I see in the fine print

1. Warranties - "free from defect" - Some panels offer 10 years. Others 25 years. I assume free from defect would be one of thos items that pop up pretty quickly after installation. Correct?

2. Warranties - Damage - Solar City says any damage caused by snow/ice/wind/trees would be covered. Things like rocks being thrown would not be covered. SunPower says basically the same thing but my installer excluded trees (said that was covered under homeowners insurance). When I read the SunPower warranty, the term "act of God" was used as an exclusion. Isn't snow/ice/wind all acts of God? So are these really covered by most manufacturers or now? I live in the Northeast and we had about 10 feet of snow last year. Lots of people around me with Solar City had damged panels. they were replaced...no questions asked.

3. Performance gurantees - It seems that most will guarantee that panels are performing within spec. They don;t guarantee producttion as that varies based on weather. Some (Solar City) would guarantee output (this is on a purchased system, not a lease). Their contract specifically states the per kwh charge that I would be reimbursed for if the system does not generate the anticpated output. The rate is less than my current total cost per kwh but it covers about half (supply cost, not the delievery cost). Does any other panel offer that or is that guarantee a bunch of BS?

4. What happens if the company who maade my panels goes under? Is the warranty gone or does it transfer somewhere else?


I'm sure these have been asked before but my search for "waaranties" pulled up every single thread. Was hoping to get these questions in a single threas. If there is one already established, please link it for me if you can.

Thanks!

I look forward to replies on this, but will comment that the terms of a home-owners policy can change in a heart-beat, and sometimes what is covered is subjective and up to a particular appraiser.

[mpkelley20]

Agreed. Homeowners insuarance is really a joke. We spend a ton of money each year on it and then as soon as you put a claim in, they cancel it on you after paying out the claim. At least, that's how it is in the Northeast. Such a scam.

[sensij]

Eevrytime I meet with a new installer they discuss their warranties or performance guarantees. reading thorugh these forums I am seeing more and more about how these really mean nothing over the long run (10 year vs 20 year) as things usually go wrong soon after installations. But I have a bunch of questions surrounding what I;ve been told vs. what I see in the fine print

1. Warranties - "free from defect" - Some panels offer 10 years. Others 25 years. I assume free from defect would be one of thos items that pop up pretty quickly after installation. Correct?

Very few panels will offer a base mechanical/workmanship warranty for more than 10 years. Performance guarantees typically go out to 25 years. It seems reasonable to guess that most warrantied failures will be of the "infant mortality" type, and those should be easier to prove as long as your installer didn't obviously mishandle the panel. Failures several years into service have the two-fold problem of being difficult to prove/assign root cause, and also typically some kind of pro-rated repair/replacement value that may not offer much meaningful compensation for the failure.

2. Warranties - Damage - Solar City says any damage caused by snow/ice/wind/trees would be covered. Things like rocks being thrown would not be covered. SunPower says basically the same thing but my installer excluded trees (said that was covered under homeowners insurance). When I read the SunPower warranty, the term "act of God" was used as an exclusion. Isn't snow/ice/wind all acts of God? So are these really covered by most manufacturers or now? I live in the Northeast and we had about 10 feet of snow last year. Lots of people around me with Solar City had damged panels. they were replaced...no questions asked.

In a legal sense, "act of god" tends to be more catastrophic than a snow storm, but interpretations vary. I would suggest that you look at the specific language of your contract, and also guess at your insurance provider's willingness to use that clause and take the reputation hit for not covering something that most would expect to be covered. I don't think you'll find an "industry standard" for this... there is not (to my eye) enough maturity in the business at this point to know what will and won't be covered as a matter of course.

3. Performance gurantees - It seems that most will guarantee that panels are performing within spec. They don;t guarantee producttion as that varies based on weather. Some (Solar City) would guarantee output (this is on a purchased system, not a lease). Their contract specifically states the per kwh charge that I would be reimbursed for if the system does not generate the anticpated output. The rate is less than my current total cost per kwh but it covers about half (supply cost, not the delievery cost). Does any other panel offer that or is that guarantee a bunch of BS?

Performance guarantees are not uncommon. As you point out, the weather is a source of variance... so the performance bar is usually set low enough that the variance is unlikely to drop output below it. Also, the performance guarantee is typically cumulative. When combined with the low bar, it more or less means that a system functioning normally will generate a large credit over the first few years towards the performance benchmark, so much so that it would take several years with a broken system before the cumulative performance actually drops below the level at which they would start to pay out.

4. What happens if the company who maade my panels goes under? Is the warranty gone or does it transfer somewhere else?

Probably case specific, but effectively gone. Even if the company is still around, proving that panel performance has deteriorated faster than the warranty allows is very difficult, and the compensation is typically pro-rated. If you work out how much you might actually recover for anything other than an immediate failure, and the amount of time the investigation takes to complete, I think you'll see you would be better off just buying a new panel so your production can be restored/maintained. Panels are approaching technical commodity status, with low failure rates and a short production lifespan as manufacturing techniques improve and efficiencies climb higher.

[J.P.M.]

I'm not sure blanket answers to your questions are possible with any reasonable assurance of covering all situations. Just the usual Caveat Emptor. As always, read the fine print and assume the worst.

On quality warranties, I've found it helps my mental approach and attempts to stay grounded in reality if, before I read the warranty, I try to put myself in the mind and situation of the manufacturer, and read the warranty from that perspective - cynically trying to think of ways the warranty wording and terms would allow me - as the party liable to pay a claim - to wiggle, squirm or B.S. my way out of honoring or paying any claim.

Think cynically. The probability of disappointment is lower. If you're wrong, chances are you'll be wrong in a pleasantly surprising way. Think like the other guy - the one with the skin in the game, then, think and act in repose to what you come up with.

On performance guarantees: They are IMO, no more than marketing tools. That opinion was more or less confirmed to me in 2005 by a paper presented by a guy named Andy Black at the World Solar Congress, and the favorable comments it got from other attendees - mostly vendors. See the net for a copy of the paper.

Usually, such warranties are written in such a way that monkeys, elephants and the rest of the zoo will fly out of your butt before a claim will even qualify for consideration. Even if honored, on production warranties that have rate schedules for reimbursement, those rates are, as the OP notes, usually and mostly much less than retail rates.

I'd also note, parenthetically, that those rates are very likely much less than the rates used when the peddler is discussing what are often inflated annual savings projections if you buy their product. IMO, that's sort of an insult to the intelligence of those who bother to see it.

If the outfit goes under, well, at worst, that's life. On the other hand, any less protection as a result of the warranty provider going belly up may not be quite as much of a disaster as first imagined if the warranty is mostly a P.O.S. to begin with.

Take what you want of the above. Scrap the rest.

[peakbagger]

The biggest issue that isn't covered with most warranties is the availability of replacement panels. Panel form factors change every few months or optimistically a few years at the most. Few if any firms are going to stock a warehouse full of spares of various sizes so what do they do 5 years out when a panel is damaged ? I seriously doubt they are going to change out the array. More likely if its microinverters they will figure out a way of crediting for the none functioning panel and leaving the dead one in place unless removing it will not impact the looks of the array.

I bought some Evergreen left overs when they went out of business and bought two spares that are stored away just in case, they were cheap enough to do it at the time but I expect few folks would.