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After discovering the photovoltaic (PV) effect, understanding physical principles, developing practical technology, decreasing the price of solar cells and modules production, creating massive amounts of PV systems and huge PV plants - maintenance and analyzing failures of PV systems and plants are becoming more and more important issues.
During last 10 years prices of photovoltaic panels were reduced about 10 times and the economic consequences were discussed in the work . Today, the prices of PV panels are around EUR 0.3 per 1 Wp of installed capacity, while the price of the entire PV power plant is around EUR 0.8 per 1 Wp of installed capacity.
Since the early 2000s, the total cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology has consistently sunk below expert expectations, mostly due to hardware improvements.
The findings show that advances in hardware features made the largest contribution to the overall cost reduction of solar PVs. The reduction in the soft costs has also been primarily driven by hardware improvements: more practical system designs might speed up installation, reducing labour or permit costs.