Don’t Miss the Prize: Using Substring Failure Data to Secure Warranty Spares Before It’s Too Late

Over the past decade, Above has inspected thousands of solar assets throughout the world and one trend is becoming increasingly clear: Substring faults are rising quickly as modules age.

These faults, often caused by bypass diode or junction box issues, aren’t just isolated module problems. They are indicators of systemic product weaknesses that can quietly erode generation and asset value if left unaddressed.

Yet, too often we see this response from O&M teams: “Its not worth the hassle, the energy gain is so small compared to the effort”

But that’s a misconception. You don’t need to remove the modules immediately to initiate a warranty claim.

With robust inspection data, such as Above’s multi-year inspection anomaly trending tools, asset owners can:

*Secure replacement modules before the product warranty expires,
*Store them as spare stock, and
*Roll out replacements later when resourcing allows.

This approach not only protects warranty entitlements but also guards against obsolescence. As form factors, connectors, and electrical characteristics evolve, securing replacements now can delay costly early repowering.

Even more importantly, time-series failure data can reveal accelerating trends that prove a latent manufacturing defect, not simple ageing.
When this evidence shows that substring failures are likely to continue beyond the warranty period, owners can, and should, pursue batch-wide warranty claims.
That requires O&M teams to treat inspection data not as a one-off health check, but as an ongoing reliability dataset with financial implications.

Scientific research supports this:

* NREL (Xiao et al., 2020) found that bypass-diode failures are among the leading causes of power loss and increase with module age.
* The IEA PVPS Task 13 (2025) report confirms that junction-box and contact defects are now among the most frequent ageing-related module failures.

Together, these studies show the same accelerating failure behaviour that Above’s decade of field data now demonstrates across the aging utility scale solar assets.

At Above, we’re helping owners turn that evidence into leverage, using data to secure early replacement entitlements, protect against obsolescence, and safeguard asset value long after the product warranty clock runs out.

Let’s make your data work harder before the warranty window closes.