From Jan Mastny on LinkedIn:
They didn’t know that these colorful cables held a terrible secret. Beneath their cheerful hues lay a weakness, a vulnerability that only the sun could reveal. For without the protective black cloak, these cables had no defense against the sun’s UV fury. They faded. Cracked. Aged like the lost souls of a haunted forest.
What about UV resistance testing? Surely, colored cables are tested, right? Yes, but there’s a twist. The most common standards for UV testing last only 720 hours (about 30 days).
Colored cable might seem fine under these limited tests. Simply no way to be sure it will hold up over decades.
I want to be clear, I got nothing against the cheesy, Halloween-themed part of the article. We gotta have fun where we can.
Aside from that, these claims smell like bullshit to me.
There is no source cited in this article. Would be nice if there was some evidence of these claims, aside from speculating, “Eh, just because they were tested this way doesn’t mean they’ll actually hold up.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen PV cable crack and degrade like Jan’s talking about here, at least under normal UV stress. Any cracked PV cables I’ve seen are from heat within the wires, like in the case of an arc fault, or too much current. And I’ve never seen white or red cables degrade faster than black cables, aside from the color fading (which, by the way, absolutely happens to black cables as well!).
It IS possible I may be in the wrong climate for this. If I take these assertions charitably, maybe there are hotter, more humid climates that expedite cable degradation, highlighting the differences in colored cable.
But I’d like some actual evidence for it, please. There’s not even any pictures of this supposed phenomenon in the article. Seems like that would be low-hanging fruit if this was truly a common phenomenon.
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