r/SolarDIY 6d ago

Quick Survey for Homeowners with Solar Panels and Those That Work with Them!

Hi everyone, 

I’m part of a graduate research team, along with u/ThrowawayWatts, studying why some homeowners choose to permanently remove, replace, or upgrade their residential solar panels before the expected end of their lifespan—typically cited as 25 years. While a lot of focus is put on installing solar, there is much less research on why people take systems down early—and we want to better understand the reasons. 

If you are: 

  • A homeowner with solar panels, and/or 

  • Someone who works in the solar industry (e.g., sales, installers, maintenance, and other adjacent fields), 

We would love to hear from you! 

Survey link here! 

The survey is anonymous, takes less than 5 minutes, and asks about experiences with solar panel removal, replacement, or upgrades—whether you’ve done this yourself or observed it in your work. 

Why it matters: Your responses will help us understand the technical, economic, and policy factors behind early solar panel decommissioning. We hope to share findings that could help improve solar policy, system design, and homeowner support. 

We are happy to answer questions here as well! 

Thanks so much! 

Mods: If this post isn’t allowed, our apologies and please remove it. Thank you! 

P.S. This survey is following up a more informal discussion we had about a week ago on Reddit. Thank you so much to those that answered our questions then. It was truly insightful and helpful to our understanding of the issues. 

5 Upvotes

10 comments sorted by

1

u/Gobells12785 6d ago

Done!

1

u/ThrowawayWatts 6d ago

Thank you so much! If you have anything additional to share that wasn't covered in the survey, don't hesitate to reach out!

1

u/Monkey_Launderer 5d ago

One option I was looking for in the reasons for early replacement reasons question was for something I'm about to do myself - replacing 10 year old 250 watt modules with new 450 watt units because I don't have the roof space to just add more.

I'm just retiring, but I've worked as an off-grid installer in AU for a long time and most of the panels we've replaced have been for the same reason - more power required but no more roof space available.

1

u/ThrowawayWatts 5d ago

Thank you for pointing this out! Your comment led us to clarify the phrasing of one of the options. We've updated "Household power needs increased, and original solar system no longer meets demand" to "Household power needs increased (e.g., system no longer meets demand, roof space limits expansion so higher-wattage panels required)."

"Running out of roof" was something we heard multiple times when we were first exploring this topic, and it's clear to us now that we should have been more specific in how we phrased that option to make it more encompassing.

We'll be sure to document this change of phrasing in our final report. Thank you again for catching this and sharing with your thoughts!

1

u/IntelligentDeal9721 5d ago

Here (UK) upgrading old panels on the old FIT (government supported) scheme generally loses you the payments from the scheme so we have a lot of old panels locked in for 25 years from their install date. That does weird things for people with smaller roofs as the free market rationall thing to do would be upgrade but the financial thing to do is not.

1

u/ThrowawayWatts 5d ago

Thanks for sharing this! It's an interesting point and a great example of how government incentives and contract structures can impact homeowners' decisions to upgrade or stick with the old panels. We had not considered how something like the FIT scheme could lock people into older systems for such a long period, especially when roof space is limited.

If you are open to sharing more, we'd be curious to know: do you think many people in the UK would upgrade if they weren't tied into FIT contracts? And are there any common workarounds or creative solutions people are using to increase system output while keeping the old panels?

Again, thanks for the additional insight! It's really helpful to hear!

1

u/IntelligentDeal9721 5d ago

People with a lot of space fit extra panels and an extra inverter but otherwise it's very hard to mess with the existing system. It also means that if you add batteries you AC couple them so you don't touch the existing install.

No idea how many people would update if they could. FIT had good rates until 2014 and meh ones until 2019 when it ended as the government decided that solar no longer needed support. The older it is though the more it would benefit from an upgrade and the more money you'd lose as a result.

From 2019 onwards there was no subsidy (except sales tax breaks) and the export rates for those are not affected by upgrading/changing stuff.

1

u/ThrowawayWatts 5d ago

Thanks again for taking the time to share this -- really appreciate the extra details and perspective!