re: Sounds like a crock
Just read on Unmanned Spaceflight that they're blaming the failure on increased EM radiation from the new panels. Even that sounds a bit fishy. Panels by themselves create no EM that I could imagine. Maybe a transformer that handles the output could do that but computer circuits that can't handle a little EM radiation certainly haven't been sufficiently hardened for a space environment.
My gosh, Voyager stayed running for years in the harshest of radioactive environments with technology way older than what the Russians had at their disposal. Whining at its finest.
Art