Enter your system's starting output and annual degradation rate to see production at any future year.
Most tier-1 panels degrade 0.3-0.6% per year and are warrantied for roughly 85-88% output at year 25 ā check your panel's actual warranty for exact figures.
Solar cells degrade gradually from UV exposure, thermal cycling, and micro-cracking ā a slow, predictable decline rather than a cliff. This projects your system's output at any future year so you can sanity-check a payback or ROI calculation against realistic long-term production instead of assuming year-1 output forever.
Degradation is a slow, predictable curve rather than a cliff ā a panel doesn't work fine for 24 years and then suddenly fail in year 25. Understanding the shape of that curve matters most when comparing a 25-year production estimate across panels with different published degradation rates, since even a small annual difference compounds meaningfully over two and a half decades.
Generally yes ā premium panels with better cell technology and encapsulation often carry degradation warranties near 0.3-0.4%/year, versus 0.5-0.7% for budget panels.
For most systems the difference is small enough to ignore in early years, but for a 20-25 year total production estimate, factoring in degradation gives a more honest number than assuming flat output.
Generally consistent within a product line, since degradation rate is largely a function of cell technology and encapsulation quality ā but different product lines from the same manufacturer (budget vs premium) can carry different published rates.