solar panel cracks, are they affecting output?

Question

The above photos were taken today. They appear to show cracked cells within at least four panels. There are more, but these were the ones I could reach for photos. The panels were cleaned yesterday, using plain water fed through a panel cleaning brush. The cracked cells were detected prior to the cleaning.

There's no surface disruption. There are no trees which could drop branches or other debris to create such cracks. The panels were heavily contaminated with pollen which was relatively easy to clean and I'm hopeful that the performance will improve for that reason.

It's early in the season of sunshine here in the sunshine state, but 6.5 kW from an eleven kiloWatt array seems low.

Contacting the PV operation responsible for our installation, sending the photos, resulted in what I would call a dismissal of my concerns. The statement effectively said that the impact of one cell would be insignificant.

This is an Enphase Energy system with microinverters for each panel. I can access reports from the web interface, but I'm not sure what to seek. Should I be attempting to identify each panel with a cracked cell (or more) to compare to adjacent uncracked panel performance?

One question carries the post: am I losing performance?

Answer 1

If you have reporting at the microinverter level, at a time when the whole array is in sun, compare the outputs of the different panels.

You could also look at historical data, where there's an expected inital overproduction and gradual decrease with time, but if things cracked post-installation you might find a sudden drop on particular panels.