Those solar panels are so nice, but how do you dispose of them?
Solar panels apparently only last about twenty-five years, and then what? They have to be replaced, but what happens to the old ones?:
The world’s solar energy generation capacity grew by 22% in 2021. Around 13,000 photovoltaic (PV) solar panels are fitted in the UK every month – most of them on the roofs of private houses.
In many cases, solar units become relatively uneconomical before they reach the end of their expected lifespan. New, more efficient designs evolve at regular intervals, meaning it can prove cheaper to replace solar panels that are only 10 or 15 years old with updated versions.
If current growth trends are sustained, Ms Collier says, the volume of scrap solar panels could be huge.
“By 2030, we think we’re going to have four million tonnes [of scrap] – which is still manageable – but by 2050, we could end up with more than 200 million tonnes globally.”
The idea is to recycle, but it’s not easy (and my guess is that it uses a lot of energy, but the article doesn’t go into that so I’m not sure):
At ROSI’s high-tech plant in Grenoble, the solar panels are painstakingly taken apart to recover the precious materials inside – such as copper, silicon and silver.
Each solar panel contains only tiny fragments of these precious materials and those fragments are so intertwined with other components that, until now, it has not been economically viable to separate them.
But because they are so valuable, extracting those precious materials efficiently could be a game-changer, says Mr Defrenne.
“Over 60% of the value is contained in 3% of the weight of the solar panels,” he says.
The team at Soren are hopeful that, in the future, nearly three-quarters of the materials needed to make new solar panels – including silver – can be recovered from retired PV units and recycled – to help speed up production of new panels.
Currently there is not enough silver available to build the millions of solar panels which will be required in the the transition from fossil fuels, says Mr Defrenne: “You can see where you have a production bottleneck, it’s silver.”
The article says recycling will be expensive.
So much of energy efficiency involving alternative energy sources such as wind and solar has its own built-in problems that seem to be mostly ignored by those pushing them. To me, nuclear seems the way to go – not that it doesn’t have it’s own problems, but I think they’ve been very much magnified by the left.
Maybe we could use them to cover up a bunch of unsightly windmill blades that seem to be accumulating.
The solar craze might lessen once these very large industrial warehouse accountants get a taste of the cost to dismantle and dispose of spent panels when a reroof is required.
My experience over many years dealing with people who promote wind and solar is that they zero understanding of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Not only don’t they understand the obvious conversion efficiency of these sources, they don’t ever take into account the waste stream at both the manufacturing and disposal ends.
Both wind and solar could contribute a lot more if their energy would be stored cheaply.
I say “would”, not “could”, because the cheapest way to store energy is to pump water upstream of a dam. Batteries are a distant and very expensive and polluting second. But there’s not enough beaks getting wet with pumping water upstream of a dam, for example wind energy can’t get tax credits without actually putting electricity on the grid.
Sometimes it’s not the technology that’s actually at fault. Sometimes it’s a set of artificial constraints put in place to magnify graft.
Recycling. Recall reading China was being paid to take recyclables… then found to be dumping them mid-ocean enroute home. Is that still happening? Who knows. Solar/wind can’t be too practical where ice and snow rule for many months, plus probably leads to degrading equipment faster than normal. Has “Team Eco” solved the problem of untold tons of road salt/chemicals going into groundwater via runoff each year? Not a priority (yet) I reckon. Someone tagged recyclable items and tracked them:
Tracking Devices Reveal Where Recycling Really Goes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmGrI_BVlnc
When the words painstakingly and hope are in the same article then you are in trouble.
And of course it always seems people seriously over-estimate how much power they generate. Pretty much at ground level the most power you can possibly get is 1100 Watts per square meter. But that’s only when the sun is directly over head. (The few hours close to noon and not during winter) But then it turns out solar panels are 15-18% efficient. That means even if you’re getting the absolute max the panel itself can generate is 200W per sq meter. (That means to generate 5 horsepower you’d need a panel of about 180 sq/ft or 17M/sq and that would only be around noon.)
Seen it happen in small scale:
What could be a problem–discussed among several people about the downsides and actual downside experience–becomes completely feasible when the alternative is inconvenient.
Another reason for masses of eighteen-wheelers to be hauling weight up and down the highways.
Recycling will become economically feasible when the whole thing becomes horribly expensive. Not until then. That’ll be one of those frabjous days, right?
It’s truly tragic how this post’s subject matter is completely glossed over by those promoting “green” approaches.. Nothing they are doing makes any sense. No nuclear, attack hydro, promote EV’s, and on and on. All to solve a problem, increasing CO2, that isn’t really a problem at all. All of this against a backdrop of 100% failure in their predictions over twenty plus years.
In our little town of Harrisville, with its tiny library, the library’s group of book choosers is hammering all of the greenies’ ideas. Worse yet, they created programs for the youngsters in the Harrisville School that was complete brainwashing.
I suggested a couple of very well researched books that could be added to the list that would massively enhance the “discussions”. They were never even considered.
Useful idiots making a small bunch of folks rich (not even them!) with our taxpayer money helping out.
I am probably too old to see the end state of all of this, but I do have a gas powered generator that those who outlive me can loan to neighbors who need to charge their EV’s and the outlet on the wall isn’t out letting anything.
My husband, an EE with decades in the power industry, has been telling me this for years about solar panels, and those windmill blades make a whole lot of useless trash as well.
Plus, firefighters won’t go on your roof to put out the flames if those panels catch fire. They’re not as dangerous as burning lithium batteries, but they don’t just stop burning with the fire hose on them.
Another issue with solar cells that is often glossed over. How do you shut them off if your house ever goes on fire. You know, you have all these solar cells making electricity and then you have a fire and the fire department tries to put it out with water. (They’ll be a little worried about getting shocked when they can’t ask someone to cut the power.)
First they came for the humanities…etc.
I didn’t think they could come for STEM.
National Electric Code.
690.13 Building or Other Structure Supplied by a Photovoltaic System. Means shall be provided to disconnect all ungrounded dc conductors of a PV system from all other conductors in a building or other structure.
(A) Location. The PV disconnecting means shall be installed at a readily accessible location either on the outside of a building or structure or inside nearest the point of entrance of the system conductors.
I get the sense that attitudes toward nuclear are becoming more positive in a lot of countries. See my Nuclear News Update from April:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/69222.html
…also, this announcement from Westinghouse:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/69421.html
Re: Nuclear power
Somehow France and Japan have supplied a substantial portion of their energy needs -from nuclear — rather than make their economies dependent on oil and gas from elsewhere — for fifty years or so.
It’s worked and I’ve not found a good rebuttal since aside from handwaving about nuclear waste and Fukushima.
I don’t consider the former as valid as made out and as to the latter, well, just raise the safety thresholds as sensible.
I regard the opposition to nuclear as largely sentimental and superstitious.
Powering an advanced civilization isn’t for sissies.
There’s two big constraints on solar & wind other than the obvious intermittant nature – storage and transmission efficiency. Cheap and efficient storage could offset the intermittant nature of solar & wind, transmission could overcome the limited spaces that are suitable for the two, allowing them to be constructed in more remote areas. And yes, the energy inputs on both creation and end of life are often excluded out of convenience to reach the desired outcome, much the same as the conventional analysis of electric cars. Rowan Atkinson had a good article on the problems with electric vehicles – in the Guardian no less. ‘
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/03/electric-vehicles-early-adopter-petrol-car-ev-environment-rowan-atkinson
“…two big constraints…”
There seems to be a third, actually, which is the massacre of birds (by wind generators) and of whales, dolphins and porpoises, etc. by ocean-/sea-based alternate energy-generating contraptions.
Unless I’m wrong about this, NOT A PEEP out of PETA, though.
Wouldn’t want to bring any attention to the massive “collateral damage”—and thus DAMAGE the Narrative(TM), I guess.
(Kinda reminds one of the silence—the almost total blackout—as far as I can tell, by official Feminist orgs WRT male-to-female transitioning and the affects THAT has on women, e.g., in sports, in prisons, in education and society, generally…)
They don’t WANT it to work. They want to reduce energy consumption and make people more dependent so they will come running to the government for all their needs. E. g. when EVs flop it’ll be,”oh too bad, you have to ride our light rail now”. Or just walk around your “15 minute city”.
Barry – mass solar farms have a similar issue to the bird blenders – they kill a lot of birds, but apparently we’re not sure why.
https://www.wired.com/story/why-do-solar-farms-kill-birds-call-in-the-ai-bird-watcher/#:~:text=The%20link%20between%20solar%20facilities,the%20same%20way%20people%20do%3F
Physicsguy:
I will be presenting to the OPPD Board my take on spending $2b plus on mostly solar and wind. The EPA is mandating carbon capture technology on natgas plants. My high school physics teacher explained the 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics to us: There is no free lunch in the Universe and You can’t breakeven. Carbon capture violates those laws.
Oops. Forgot about those. (They’ve even been in the news recently, at least WRT California).
Yeah, another problem…but since they “fit the Narrative”, one shouldn’t expect anything to be done about them. IOW, those people (and I guess birds) can eat s***.
I assume the problem will continue until those promoting those fantasies will be totally exposed to ridicule…which, alas, will be accompanied by a lot of environmental (and other) damage.
The KEY, though, is that these solar panels are simply a cash cow for China—that ecologically cutting edge country….
FOAF is correct. The push to electrical is about control.
FOAF agree they don’t want it to work. In addition to the stay in you designated zone and ride a bicycle, bus, and train there is the part where they outlaw modern agriculture or put Harvard studies grads in charge of it so most of us just die.
My daughter is a real estate agent here in Texas, and she tells me that the roof solar panels are problematical from the POV of buying and selling a house with them on the roof. (Aside from the danger of fires and shoddy installment by fly-by-night contractors.) Who actually owns them, when installed on a house that goes on the market, if the original owner is still paying for them? The seller? The installer company? If the new buyer doesn’t want them on their roof, does the install company (if they are still in business) can repossess/remove them? No good answers, at this point – which is why they are problematical. Besides being desperately unattractive, a fire hazard, and of limited duration/use.
I would not be surprised if solar panels are considered toxic waste, when being disposed of.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-14/california-rooftop-solar-pv-panels-recycling-danger
There are good alternatives to the huge, expensive, bird killing wind generators. Towers that capture the wind in all directions. Learned about this on a very interesting YouTube channel, Robert Murray Smith. His focus is on small, distributed wind power generation. The way solar panels are on residential buildings.
The land underneath solar panels is poisoned.
Makes no difference at all to the enviro-commies how much energy ( as in watts) is expended, how much toxic waste is generated, how many birds get killed or fried, or how many people freeze to death in pursuit of their green religion.
The climate is clearly not the issue with these greenies; what motivates them is total and complete control of the “unwashed masses.” They are simply Marxist-Leninist’s now garbed in climate-change clothing. (The “workers paradise” band-wagon did not work out so good).
If, say, fusion energy became practical and economical – an energy source that produces ZERO pollution and ZERO waste products – the energy source that powers our sun – you just watch how the greenies will agitate against its implementation.
Inexpensive and easy access to energy sources and its by-products is what produced the modern economies – and wealth – we have today.
This has allowed greater individual choices and mobility and, in general, greater individual freedoms; all of which are anathema to the Marxist-Leninist’s and under whose umbrella we find the climatistas.
Speaking of Marxism/Leninism, turns out that the world govt guru and Davos kingpin, Klaus Schwab has a bust of Lenin in his office.
How many folks have been killed because of Lenin’s policies and ideology?
But hey, no big deal.
After all Schwab and Lenin have the same goal; one world govt under the control of……..drum roll please,,,,,,,,,,,,,,oh, that’s right, Klaus Schwab and his pals.
In case you are wondering, Herr Schwab is a big believer that climate change is an existential threat to life on earth.
But do not fret folks; he is here to save us all.
Most recycling of solar panels consist of removing metal frames, then digging a big hole, dropping the panels into the hole, then covering up the hole.
Yet Biden is so impressed by the gigantic size of the turban blades (though he never quite gets the numbers right).
Environmental activist and “fact checkers” claim that more birds are killed by other forms of power generation, but others are suspicious of those claims and wonder where the numbers presented come from. Anti-fossil fuel groups are getting as good at manufacturing fake news as the fossil fuel industry was.
Yellowstone, the show I am getting tired of watching, presents an environmental dilemma: environmentalists demanding that livestock be kept out of grasslands to preserve the sage grass, and also demanding that massive solar power farms be built (which will do more damage to the sage grass). It’s always something. There is no environmental free lunch.
What a bunch of Luddites we have here. Are solar panels THE ANSWER? Of course not, but there are places where they make sense. I have 30 panels on my (metal) roof, grid connected. When the sun shines – which it does >300 days a year here – I sell my excess power, when it doesn’t, I buy. Last year I did slightly less than breakeven. My total electric cost for the year was <$35, which saves me over a thousand a year. Cost ~$19k 5 years ago, which means I break even in another 15 years and make money for at least a few years after.
Disposal fears? By weight, 15% aluminum and steel. 84.9% glass (yes, most of the cells are crystalline silicon, i.e. glass, plus the plate glass over it). Most of the remaining material is easily recoverable by standard electronic recycling.
There will be more hazardous material thrown away by you guys in those 20+ years by replacing that smartphone you're leashed to. ?