Ignored problems don’t go away; instead they grow over time. Surely climate change has taught us that. Yet we risk repeating our mistakes believing technology alone can save us in our rush to deploy zero-carbon solar power systems.
Decarbonizing our electrical grid is key, yet electricity is invisible. Solar panels can perform their service silently and invisibly for years. Herein lies the danger of hidden, major failures accumulating and going unaddressed for years at a time. People, processes and technology are required to ensure panels perform for 25 to 40 years. The value to our planet isn’t in the installation of a solar panel; it lies in the power it produces over its lifespan!
If it takes a village to raise a child, the same is true for a solar panel. Someone needs to pay for it to be produced and installed. Others need to watch it and notice when a problem develops. People need to then act and address those problems, year after year. Finally, at the end of its life someone needs to reclaim the resources that went into creating that panel. Like a person we want that panel to have a long and productive life.
Our role in the village is to check each day, notice problems that are emerging and then work with others to address them. We play a small but vital role because nobody else in the village will notice the problems that we can see, even if they walk by that panel every day.
We started building our solution and our team over three years ago. Our solution was designed from the ground up to be highly efficient, not require additional hardware, globally accessible and not rely on specialists to detect problems. Two years ago we ran a successful pilot with a former school teacher in Turkey, monitoring systems here in Ontario. Monitoring our 400 systems daily takes a person with a few weeks of training only 20 minutes.
In the last three years we’ve looked at hundreds of systems beyond those we monitor and have seen how often they have hidden unaddressed problems. We’ve realized people celebrate an installation but forget the need to care for existing projects, blinded by the next new build. Imagine if we raised children this way! This approach isn’t sustainable and will not solve climate change. Financial incentives have rewarded new construction but not effectively maintaining existing systems.
We have decided to publicize the problems we see. Why? Installation of solar projects is now increasingly driven by financial returns. Previously systems installed for greenwashing purposes could achieve that goal whether or not they produced electricity reliably since losses aren’t visible. However, the systems now being installed worldwide for financial returns will never achieve their goals with that same approach.
The only way to achieve our financial and environmental goals is to expose and address these previously hidden losses that many would prefer to ignore. The solar systems being built need the entire village’s support.