This is a very good and common question. Todays solar panels are extremely long serving. Manufacturing warranties on workmanship and defects are usually from 12 – 25 years. Generally speaking very little can go wrong with a solar panel. They are very passive pieces of electrical equipment. What happens over a solar panels lifetime though, is they can and have a reduction of power output over time. All our warranties on our panels now guarantee that the power will still be at least 80% of the rated power at the time of purchase after 25 years!
This depends on the system you have in place. Generally speaking we have protections in place to stop your solar system from working when the grid fails so lines workers can safely work on the power lines without worrying about your system feeding power into the grid. We now have though a number of battery systems that will continue to operate and supply power to critical loads during a power cut so your fridge, lighting etc can continue to operate. With these systems your solar panels continue to work and supply power to your battery.
This is a relatively new product to mainstream residential solar installations. Essentially they cut a standard solar panel in half, thereby reducing the effect of shading from foreign objects or trees. Any system utilising half-cell solar panels will be overall much more efficient.
At Solarworx in almost all our residential and commercial installations we now use Monocrystalline solar panels. These are made from a better grade of silicon than polycrystalline and perform better in lowlight conditions. All our solar panels are listed on the CEC approved module list for safety and piece of mind.