Trouble is, we're not finding a J.D. Powers satisfaction survey conducted by calling owners of 5 or 10 year old PV plants.
What we want is a report on failure rates due to various mechanisms for many brands.
I find reports describing some mechanisms, but usually without mentioning brand.
Series troubleshooting: Bypass diodes fail regularly, either because they do not have a high enough power rating or because they are overloaded due to nearby lightning strikes. With the following hypothetical, but realistic case pv magazine starts a series which aims to make the estimation of...
www.pv-magazine.com
During the first 10 years in service, the chance of failure within a PV system is approximately 10%. Inverters and other electronic devices account for 85% of all those PV system failures. Only about 1 in 2000 modules will fail during their warranted 25-year life. The system components most...
solairgen.com
www.pveducation.org
We've heard that some manufacturers say partial shading of their panel in full sun voids the warranty. So you know that one has poor heatsinking of bypass diodes (or series cells within one bypass group add up to the reverse breakdown voltage of a shaded cell.)
Proper engineering and worst-case testing could make reliable modules.
But the market is probably driven primarily by purchase price. Just like other products in the U.S.
And much of the volume is commercial scale PV plants, which have different solar exposure environment from home systems.
I may have a tree top which partially shades an array during full sun.
A commercial scale plant with single-axis tracker may shade one edge of an entire row of panels.
SunPower came out with the P17 series of panels, having no bypass diodes but many parallel series strings of small cells. Shading one edge of many panels just reduces current output from all of them equally. That is designed for the commercial plant, and I decided not to buy them for home use.