I worked in the waste management Industry for 15 years. And the amount of red tape is unbelievable and the environment agency is very uncooperative. One instance we were salvaging all the electrical items from going to landfill so could be recycled however it wasn’t on our license so we have to dump them all back into the landfill pile and they all got sent to landfill. This was about 25 tons a week
That is so sad. I try to recycle everything, even old screws etc go in my ‘metals’ bucket to take separately to our local recycling centre.on top of our usual recycling bag that the council takes, I have pots and bags for, plastic bags, batteries, cheese bags, blister packs Superdrug take these), cat food pouches and crisp/sweet/biscuit packaging. Oh, also Rymans recycle old pens.
Some regulations are too restictive. EPA does a lot of good stuff like clean air and water but recycling needs some serious work! Most of the stuff we recycle actualy gets thrown away and people like you who want to recycle shouldn't have an obsticles to doing so!
Genuine question, Why are solar panel manufacturers being made to take responsibility for their products but other companies are allowed to mass produce single use plastics and drink bottles with reckless abandon?
@@jimurrata6785 Hhhmm think there’s a reason the fossil fuels industry hired the same lobbying group that worked for big tobacco back in their lying days!
In EU electronics manufacturers and distributors pay for the collection and recycling of electronics from household waste recycling centers. Most bottled/canned drink manufacturers also have to take care and pay for the collection and recycling.
Of course, the question is; "at what point do solar panels need to be replaced?" If current production solar panels have an output factor of 80% at 25 years, does it really make sense to replace them? For most applications, possibly the replacement threshold might be 50% or even lower and it would make more sense to add new panels to the installation to keep output at acceptable levels rather than replacing old but productive panels. The useful life of current production panels might well be over 50 years for many installations now so the re-processing issue might be more of a rising tide than a tsunami.
This is what I was wondering as well, seems like PV output reduction over time has a similar question to electric vehicle battery degradation over time. I would like to believe that a panel having a second life somewhere else would be significantly less environmentally impactful that shredding it down to its constituent ingredients and making a new one.
I got 2 replaced 280w panels for £50 each, they are big and went "out of life" as the supplier said which is why they were cheap, yet they still crank out expected power, I even saw 250w on my monitor the other day and it wasnt even setup at the optimal angle, id take 2nd hand solar panels any day of the week.
Very interesting. One thing we might be looking at in 25 yrs that might push early retirement is panel efficiency. You might have a sh!t load of panels you put in at 18% efficiency at new and are now degraded down to 80% capacity. But now there panels that are out that are maybe 30-40% efficient and life span is 100 yrs before 5% degradation happens... So maybe to change them out early is cost effective get more out of that solar space and then putting them on the used resale market for poor bastards like me that cant afford the new ones 🤣 Anyway -- fusion is just around the corner👍 Cheers
Oh here's another important thing that I think you're missing: What is the environmental cost to make the panel in the 1st place and then to repeat the process and make a new panel after you've recycled your old panel to a different use?
@@SimonWoodburyForget Weissbsch et. Al did a study on the energy return on investment of solar. New panels barely break even at a ratio of about 10:1. Nuclear, however was shown to make over 70 times the energy over it's lifetime than what was used to put it up and keep it running. Recycling solar panels will probably reduce that ratio below sustainable levels.
@@Shaker626 the only issue is we have till 2030 to change the entire powergrid. Nuclear takes decades to setup and get running. We don't have decades. We have 7 years so solar is just to fill the gap while we get more nuclear plants up and running. Also, keep in mind nuclear has a huge carbon impact due to all the concrete required so it isn't quite as green as some companies claim(biased).
@@0xsergy Sweden was able to move away from coal in just 10 years by going nuclear. China and Korea build reactors in four to seven years today. It's only in the modern West where policy makers have become adamant in delaying the construction of plants has time been an issue. Furthermore, nuclear uses many times less concrete and steel compared to solar based on how much energy each source makes over its life, something that is tied to the EROIE ratio I talked of above, but is also independently verifiable with NEA stats in the USA.
I have 2 panels where the glass has shattered. They both work well for my needs. I spread some clear Flexseal to stabilize the glass. The glasses broke like a car window. i.e: millions of pieces. None of the glass pieces are missing and the clear Flexseal stops the glass from actually falling out. Not perfect, but they still work well.
@@alexboros1751 i wonder if all the greenies realize how much toxicity is in solar panels when they break or its time to throw them away cuz they're worn out.
What might be a good idea is to create a market for used solar panels. Could make it easier for lower income people to become energy independent. Just because a panel has lost a lot of its efficiency doesn't mean it can't still be used.
If you decommission a large array of PV modules then you find that their degradation is not consistent. Some will have deteriorated considerably while others still have plenty of life left in them. What's more you can easily tell them apart with a degree of accuracy by a simple visual inspection. So by simply grading the old PV modules you can make the idea for a second life even more compelling.
@JZ's BFF why? Most other products have used markets, why not solar panels? Not everyone can afford to buy one straight from the factory. Selling used ones at a discounted price also helps to reduce the cost of replacing the solar panels. When using something like a solar panel on an industrial scale you need it to be performing at a sufficient efficiency to be profitable. But someone who just wants to put one on top of this house, a used one may be the better option or only option they can afford.
Companies like San Tan Solar in Chandler Arizona, sell used solar panels. Some time ago, I purchased 5Kw of solar panels from them for $1300 US (shipped). They have served me quite nicely. A solar farm, at end-of-life replacement, could stack used solar panels vertically on a large flat bed. Make arrangements in each city to have a "sale" location where citizens could buy panels right off the truck. Kind of like a taco stand. I found that one panel, parked in the shade, could recharge all of my cell phones and laptops! Some of these panels could be used as siding on barn and shed construction projects.
Reduce, reuse, repurpose, recycle ♻️ I think too often we forget about reuse and repurpose. I like the idea of finding new use for older panels. They might not produce as much power as when first made, but many will still produce a good amount of power suited for some second-hand uses.
One opportunity here that I don't see being worked on is an effective way of gaining a second life for old PV modules. Typically when PV modules are getting old you will get a few in an installation dying while the others around them still have lots of life left in them. Visual inspection of the modules can usually tell the good ones from the deteriorated ones. For the large ground mounted solar farms it should be possible to extend the life of the PV modules when the array is approaching the end of its expected service life by grading the old modules and using the ones that are not showing signs of deterioration together in an array dedicated to getting maximum service life out of the old modules and only replacing a percentage of the arrays out to use new modules. This is all predicted on there being a source of labor to do this work at a cost that makes this strategy cost effective.
*Give them away, or sell as scrap!* If nothing else, degraded panels can be sold as scrap or even given away to people who have more time than money, who can attempt to repair or just bridge across dead cells in the panels. Output voltage will be lower if cells are simply bridged, and that would not fit in with the mass-scale matched panels of commercial use, but could be just fine for private use.
@Richard L You know those pick-your-own farms? Give people a guide to identify degraded panels, number each panel, let people walk down 'older' aisles of the solar farm, and give them a cheap camera provided by the solar farm. They snap photos of panels that look degraded enough to buy, go back to the cashier for a quote, they disconnect the respective panels from the grid and you can pick them up with an IKEA flatbed cart. I don't know, it would be fun to have something like this.
every commercial enterprise needs planned obsolescence to roll. That is why you see boom of perovskite panels - they are not significantly better, but just like EV cars, they are built to break down , with some irreplaceable component involved making them obsolete and not repairable . Silicon solar panels are easy to repair, just like combustion cars. They are not perhaps super-efficient, but who cares, problem of efficiency is problem of overpopulation and if there is overpopulation, no tech will help anyway. That is why just like "cash for clunkers" programme, industry will push to obsolete and "recycle" (read - remove from 2nd hand market) silicon panels, and replace them with disposable perovskite panels with more "acceptable" for 5 years lifespan (more acceptable for manufacturers, and they are who lay the cards). Well made silicon solar panels, used with care, never break down completely. After 25 y they might have lower output - but if their owner cared to not overheat them above 70C, they will have 100% of their output. So if you already have silicon - care for it like wise people care for their Porsches and Ferrari's, they might be soon not only out of production but even illegal.
20 years here, 18 x 165W panels. 1 panel died during that period (it looks like it was actually damage at the time of installation that finally caught up with it). But now I'm in a situation where I want to upgrade the panels and the existing installation is the prime roof space. So I am actually DIY'ing replacing the existing panels with 16 x 320W panels and as I get further into the project it looks like I will be able to almost double production due to modernization of the technology (14% to 21-22% efficiency) plus slightly larger panels that still never-the-less fit on the old rails. What to do with the old panels though. 20 years old. All working quite well except for the one that died. Well, it turns out there is a good solution. Peak grid use occurs in the 4-9pm time frame. Southern-facing panels (maximum daily production where I live) are good until around 5pm before dropping off precipitously. But WESTERN-FACING panels can produce good power all the way until around 7pm, meaning that I can produce power for a good chunk of the peak grid use time period. Western-facing panels don't give you the same full production... not even close. But they give you production at a critical time and its the perfect use for the old panels. I'll only be recycling one panel (one out of the 18 original panels died in the intervening 20 years, and I didn't realize it because both strings of 9 were on one MPPT. But as part of the new project I upgraded the string inverter which now has 3 MPPTs and the bad panel stuck out like a sore thumb).
@@ericeric9208 I've started experimenting with panels on the back deck to try to fill-out the late-afternoon generation. It should be noted that the main south-facing system still generates 25% of its 12:30 peak at 6pm. So its still an option to home owners to just fill their best roof space with panels regardless of the direction and still be able to match the home's demand at 6pm. On a panel-by-panel basis the total West-facing generation is far less than the main system (it gets no sun due to house shading until 1pm), but the panels do produce around 25% more after 2pm or so. Still, after 6pm it again tapers off quickly and there isn't much of a point trying to capture optimal power after that. And depending on the utility tariff, another X% past the peak start time. It seems worth doing to me... even more so for people with unobstructed western-facing areas. Another option is to load-shift a small amount of power with a battery. Not a full-fledged backup battery, but instead a grid-tied load shifter. For efficiency, Solar -> DC charge controller -> battery -> grid-tied micro-inverter fed from the battery. With a timed switch to turn the micro-inverter on at 4pm and off at 10am. It could be scaled to any size but to avoid annoying the utility the power should be less than the house's vampire current. So, 200W to 500W in my case. I kinda like this concept. It would be a fun project, anyhow. And inexpensive due to the low amounts of power involved.
@@ericeric9208 Found it on Ali. What an interesting device! Yes, that is precisely what I was looking for. I'm not worried about daily-cycling the battery, it will be LiFePO4. Plus no reason to drain it all the way each day either.
You can also recycle the working panels by just giving them to someone else who is interested but unsure, use a spare panel or three to get more people into solar!
@@fisharepeopletoo9653 Yes, I know a person who would like a few of my old panels. They aren't useful for any serious 'new' installation... too old and the power density is too low. Plus they weigh 2x as much per watt as a modern panel... 40lbs for a 20-year-old 165W panel vs 40lbs for a modern 320W panel. But there are a lot of people out there with DIY systems and mounting space where any solar panel helps. -Matt
Dave thanks. Here in Australia the sector is so mature that plenty of people are on their third system. The original 1500w systems are selling for between zero and $250 AUD and are replaced mostly for higher capacity systems. Among the presumably vast majority of panels with useful life remaining, the worst case should be that instead of transport to an extraction site, they go as ballast in shipping containers to the countries that will benefit the most from them. I will view with suspicion any decision-makers who appear to favour destruction over ongoing use where possible.
I work in the industry in aus. They all end up in landfill. The few companies that claim to be able to “recycle” cannot, and have dubious histories. The entire industry is full of conflicts of interest and outright scams. Mostly set up by previous government with blessing of opposition.
@@questioneverythingalways820 Sorry to hear. It upsets me how much stuff that opposition let go through to the keeper. I tend to vote for them but this time I wanted them in a minority government to be forced to act and to cut out some of the BS.
The US needs to add a recycling charge to any imported panels, especially if US manufacturers and/or installers are going to be responsible for recycling the panels. The money could go to developing efficient means of recycling and the building of recycling plants.
PV can be used to bult house in cold countries.. the glass will trap heat and keep home warm.. need to make a standard frame wall where the panels can be fitted to create structures.
You are thinking, I like what you say about using the panels to gather heat in cold latitudes. Keep posting, there are many vested interests who want nuclear power plants for the world. Mr Putin shows one of the costs of the nuclear solution.
Great program!! I've been recycling electronics in Phoenix, AZ. for over 10 years. I don't have solar on my house, but many of my neighbors do. I'm hoping these recycling programs get started sooner rather than later! Hope you do more programs on recycling! Take Care, Jim
I remember estimating how much energy it cost to produce the silicon used in a PV panel. I recall thinking that if you already had silicon (as opposed to silica), the energy cost dropped substantially. The funny thing is, it's all energy cost. And if energy is practically free due to PV panels, there is little incentive to do it. Even if we did "recycle" them... it seems most recycling has landed in the landfill for the past two decades.
Yep it is amazing how little is recycled, about the only thing we do right in a decent amount is low voltage lead acid car battery recycling, but even that is not exactly a "clean green" process.
The lower the energy needed to produce a new solar panel the more profitable the new solar panels potentially can be. The energy is never going to be free, so using less is better.
Optimism is sweet but, Humans been filling lands with garbage for centuries, now. No kidding. It's insane to dump garbage in our Oceans, too, but, it's still happening. And, plastics cannot be "recycled", yet. Somebody better invent "garbage control" faster?
the solar farms rotate replace their panels and sell them used. i purchased such panels, high efficiency 350W ones for $100 each delivered (16 units on a pallet). i have had them for a few years and they are generating higher than their rated power even now. for those of us who have the space, it makes sense to buy used and just add as the old panels generate less. at some point probably when space becomes an issue, we could rotate the weakest units out while adding newer units. as the panel efficiency keeps going up and perovskite keeps getting better and recycling of the old units improves, we should be able to minimize the environmental impact.
In Australia all rooftop solar must be installed by a licenced electrician and it is even illegal to change a leaking tap washer ( people do change washers even though its illegal and the union let it pass but they do go after businesses etc ) - 12V for caravans etc is ok for the handyman
This week I am having 17 x 390 Watt solar panels installed. It's great to know that they could last 30 years, but as a concerned environmentalist I needed to know that they will have a good end-of-life plan. They do, and should be almost fully recyclable in 2052, when the Rystad article says that the market will be worth $80bn! I will be keeping a close eye on when the kWh price matches what I could have done just by buying the electricity, hoping it will be around 7 years or less from now.
@@patrikschurmann6610 it is, but that's the sticker rating and I am getting just under 6kW in full sun, with 3 facing directly East, 3 facing West and the other 11 South. They're made by Trina.
At a very minimum, the aluminum (or aluminium, over there) can be salvaged easily. The aluminum frame can get you a couple of bucks per panel. That part is already profitable. extracting the silver should also be, currently, profitable, though taking a few more steps. The silicon, not so much. Its not just a simple alloy. You have to recreate the PN structure, and remove the doping compounds before that silicon can be reused. That's were most of the PV cost is. FYI: as of 2020, new solar panels, at retail (not wholesale) prices came out to ~$0.70/watt. I saw some stupid Tesla ad claiming they could do ~$2.50/watt, installed. So they are charging more than $1.80/watt to install the thing. That's $18,000 for a 10KW setup, excluding the $7000 panel cost. "Just have a think" about learning how to do it yourself ! Its not that hard.
The frame will get yoy a few cents IF you can sepeeate it and clean it. The issue is the silicon. We need to re use this. BTW, older solar modules contain about .75 ounce of silver.
Or alternately, an entrepreneur can "recycle" used panels by testing them and grouping them into matching output sets and flipping them as bargain panels with known performance parameters.
There are already dc to dc converters for solar panels that normalize the output for individual panels (so a shadow on one panel doesn't effect the whole array), those should be able to deal with different panels.
Im skeptical. This is reminding me when the plastic industry was taking a PR hit because of pushback on single-use plastic. The plastic industry decided to create a committie and claim that recycling was not only fesible but potentially profitable. But in reality, all recycling is done at a loss and the majority of plastic produced isn't even recycleable. Of course people who want to make money will try to paint everything in the best light in order to ensure their recycling monopoly.
But don't worry, it will for sure be a great way for some to siphon some government (= taxpayer) money without any actual success or environmental impact. The only "solution" offered by the government will be to impose new taxes on the PV industry, making the future production prohibitively expensive, much in line with the current "sorry, the good times are over, you just gotta make do with less" green agenda.
That's a really stupid and american take on this problem. The immediate costs of production may be lower but in the long term producing new and throwing away usable plastics will harm the environment way more and will therefore become much more expensive when considering the indirect costs.
Most of my family in Philippines would love to have PV modules on their homes, they simply can't afford them and must go on buying dirty electricity for high prices. Used old ones would take stress out of the grid, lower pollution and give people a reliable source of energy for the most important devices.
I have heard long ago that the only reason there wasn't any recycling going on was the lacking economy of scale. It's always been clear that things would change once there was mass adoption of solar panels and therefore anyone who holds this up as an argument against solar is arguing in bad faith.
Recycling isn't easy or cheap. Just look at plastics, paper, batteries, etc. I think it's reasonable to have some anxiety about the practicality and effectiveness of recycling solar panel materials. To say someone is arguing in bad faith means they are deliberately lying or misleading, and saying that anyone who questions whether these materials will ever be recycled efficiently are arguing in bad faith is, ironically, arguing in bad faith. Hypocrisy is the most human trait.
I think the reason is that each of the freaking things weighs 20kg and is 1x1.7m big, even transporting these beasts efficiently to recycling sites is expensive.
@@clray123 If we can afford to transport it to a shredder, we can afford to transport it everywhere. Or how light do you think copper cables, steel or paper is?
For perspective, coal ash is 13% of total landfill in Australia. Contruction waste from buildings is the largest fraction. Moving to wind, solar and batteries will reduce landfill if we didn't bother to recycle the materials. It's schroedingers material problem - either the minerals are too scarce and expensive to meet our needs, or it's a gigantic mountain of terrible waste materials. Both arguments are bullshit.
Of course, you are not counting the extraction and waste of mining the materials and manufacturing of the panels and batteries in the first place. It is also a geopolitical problem since most renewable equipment comes from China which doesn't have our best interests in mind. World solar production is about 3.1%. Maybe we double that. More than that is probably not economically a good idea.
@@gronkotter It could be both energy sources are viable depending on situations? I am fine with a few percent of solar and wind, but the greenies want 100% renewables and that is not doable or good.
The Bhadia Solar Park in India mentioned as large but in relation to Australian solar panel station is larger The site, chosen because it's one of the most consistently sunny places on Earth, would be home to a mind-boggling 17-20 gigawatts of peak solar power generation and some 36-42 GWh of battery storage. To give you a sense of scale, that's nearly 10 times the size of the world's current largest solar power installation, the 2.245-GW Bhadia Solar Park in India, and more than 30 times more energy storage than the last "world's biggest battery" I wouldn't say solar panels are useless, they might be in Germany but not in Australia. Singapore uses 15% of their power from those Solar Panels, they just ran a very long cable to Singapore from Australia to do it though. $30 billion project.
as these solar farms increase in size, we aught to be able to determine the detrimental aspect of such places by measuring how much their temperatures rise. if cities are hotter because of less vegetation so huge numbers of solar energy absorbing panels will likely raise area temperatures. people should study this!
They will measure the temperature and they will conclude that climate change is worse than ever so we have to build more solar farms. Haven' t they recently measured the record breaking UK temperatures next to tarmac located in two airports? Also, what about the space that solar farms occupy? I hope that ppl will realise that if CO2 is the demon, then nuclear energy plants is the only exorcism that can be work for a more prosperous humanity.
@David Roads Hmm I mainly talk about crops. Animals can co-exist with panels but my guess is that you have to limit your choices here to sheep, since cows are too big and goats are too dangerous.
Did I miss the part where he said how much energy and hydrocarbons are expended in these solar panel recycling processes? Don’t think you can realistically have a chat about it without addressing that point.
Solar panels like battery storage slowly decline over time. A reduction of 10 or 25% production or storage is not a big deal after 10 or 20 years. They still will work but will be some what less productive. Oversize the installation by 10% when installing them and then don't worry about them for many, many years or decades. I do agree however that all products need to be made with recycling in mind at the end of their useful life. Everything needs to be recycled. Recycled materials need to be used in the manufacture of ALL products.
I agree. What I call 'operpaneling' - startng with more theoretical solar power than the invertor can handle before limiting has big advantages. It enables the system to produce more steady output over the day, with the invertor limiting the power during the peak hours of sun. This may seem wasteful but it isn't because it avoids running the invertors well below full power for most of the day, while overloading the grid during the peaks. In the UK we are only permitted to feed 16A per phase into the grid (around 4kW), but with overpaneling and invertor limiting a lot more energy can be put to the grid without overload. It extends life too, as you say.
Then the roof needs to be replaced and the panels removed anyway, or the building is sold to someone who will tear it down and build something else, or land use changes and a big solar farm isn't feasible there anymore or any of a thousand different things. Technical life span is very different from real world life span.
I’m in solar, don’t replace them, just add more if you have the space, to up the voltage. They never stop producing, centuries down the line they’d still generate DC electricity. Just not a lot.
I got PV in 2018 & love it. I've been saving money over the past months by only doing all the GPU computation work during brighter days. I certainly don't want my panels to go to landfill - hopefully in 20 years time it will be easier to kickstart the recycling process.
Someone recently made a argument that it might be better to use computers for heating in winter. The computational power could be turned towards crypto mining to offset power cost. Or maybe donated to science.
It's almost like every "green solution" that will supposedly save the planet has flaws that mean it won't save the planet after all. Could it be that there are simply and actually way too many humans on the planet for the planet to sustainably support? Yes, it definitely could.
This is very interesting, thanks! You should also HAVE A THINK ABOUT foamed insulation. There is a tsunami of that coming as well and it does not have other inherent value. With buildings having a life span of 50 - 100 years and foam insulation lasting thousands of years - we are pushing our problems on to the next generation again, just like lead paint and asbestos.
The silicon doesn't go bad on the panels. Its the printed silver ink lines (conductors) on the panel that will exhibit work hardening and cracking due to daily temperature cycling. If you could paint new silver conductors on the cells, you could breath new life into an old solar panel.
@@VeggieRice oh no? What are the anodes mounted on steel ship hulls made from? Aluminium which has a lower electrical conductor in comparison to silver or gold. Combine that with the materials that make up a solar panel then yes the dissimilar metals effect would be much greater. The cell mounts would degrade and power loss would increase. Not to mention the huge cost and environmental impact of mining huge quantities of silver versus aluminium.
@@shrubby-ov4yw If you think that ship building and solar voltaic are similar in composition or craftmanship, i'm afraid this convo is at an impasse, friend. and i agree about the silver vs aluminum impact. tbh i'm putting an unnatural amount of hope/faith in the new perovskite solar cells coming out. Really hope the industry swings in development of that type of solar energy to take these kinds of metals sourcing out of the picture
The true nature of this problem can only be assessed when we have some vital information - how does panel efficiency drop versus time? Does it carry on or plateau? How do different panels differ in this respect. You don't mention the need to assess when a panel is to be removed. This needs a complex calculation of energy loss versus cost of replacement minus scrap value integrated over future time. For example, if a panel's output falls by 10% and then levels off up to 30, or 50 years, there is a good argument for keeping it in service and making up the loss with extra panels on the invertor string. In the UK, there is a case for what I call, 'operpaneling' - starting with more theoretical solar power on a string than the invertor can handle before limiting has big advantages. It enables the system to produce more steady output over the day, with the invertor limiting the power during the peak hours of sun. It also means that fall in output is reduced with age. This may seem wasteful but it isn't so bad because it avoids running the invertors well below full power for most of the day, when the sun is away from optimal direction, and thus not making best use of their capability. It also avoids overloading the grid during the peaks. In the UK we are only permitted to feed 16A per phase into the grid on domestic systems (around 4kW), but with overpaneling and invertor limiting a lot more energy can be put to the grid without overload. I have an 8kW system feeding my two-phase mains. It has never exceeded 7kW in peak sun (except on cloud edges - a known phenomenon whereby the bright cloud acts as a 'second sun'. In the recent heatwave, when air temp reached 36C the panels felt very hot, and output was down to 6kW in peak sun. Again, a known phenomenon, little talked about, that might be more of a problem in hot countries. Ageing is very likely to be speeded up at high temperatures too. Might it be worth rear water cooling (and maybe finding a use for the heat - such as to heat swimming pools?
"Might it be worth rear water cooling (and maybe finding a use for the heat - such as to heat swimming pools?" I looked into this in late 2013 for my Massachusetts home. There is a German solar manufacturer that was integrating solar panels with water cooling. The amount of panels I needed to heat the pool in the shoulder months (to lengthen the 2-3 month pool season in my northern climate) was too expensive and I didn't have enough roof. I just ended up with 38 solar panels, a 10Kw system, and no pool. Unless the kiddie pool counts, then I do have a pool.
@@markvalery8632 Interesting, and I didn't know that such panels were available. Yes, I did have doubts, and though I have 8kW of ground mounted panels, they are some distance from my (small) pool. Of course if some sort of cooling did greatly extend useful life of the panels, as well as preventing power loss, then it might worth considering in hot climates.
@@gags730 8 years 6 months, 38 panels. 1 panel failure within the first month. 4 Enphase micro inverter failures of the total timespan. Total system degradation might be 5% looking at my yearly outputs, but the variability due to clouds and snow is greater than the degradation. If I look at the best production day each year (late April to early May), I can say that maybe there is a 2.3% reduction.
There is actually a lot about modeling the losses already in research. There’s immediate failures mostly due to manufacturing defects then slow degradation. You can track down that online in many papers.
If there are ways to build solar panels in a way that makes it more easy to separate the materials for recycling, it might be a good idea to get producers to implement them.
I broke even around year 8. Unfortunately the batteries don't seem to hold up like the panels. We will get hammered with the current price of batteries, so we don't know if we'll be replacing them. Nuclear and natural gas are seeming to be the way.
As usual your assessment of this issue was excellent. I hope the recycling rapidly picks up pace. The projection, up to the year 2050, demonstrated a lack of realism. I'm aware of the energy that goes into the production of ultra-pure N and P type doped polysilicon. Once fragmented it will still take much energy to reconstitute the grown solar cell structure.
Silicon, like glass and aluminum, takes far less energy to re-refine previously processed materials than to process virgin materials. Recycling the silicon after stripping it of any useful materials would take far less energy than starting from fresh.
@@cacaokingdom3122 - Thank you for that clarification. When you state that starting from fresh I assume you are referring to starting from quartz-rich sand and carbon feed stocks. That is very energy intensive. If one is starting from broken up solar panels then much energy still needs to go into creating new solar cells, generally more then the finished glass and aluminum frame materials that make up a finishish panel. Currently, isolating the used solar cells from the frame material is labor intensive. Even if one starts from isolated used solar cells that material needs to be refined to remove the doping materials and get it to the extreme level of purity needed to grow large crystals at high temperature. Then the crystal has to be sliced in to thin wafers. Those then need to be highly polished before being placed in a vacuum chamber to be infused with the N and P type dopants. After that the conductors need to be applied to the surface. Then the fresh cells need to be arranged on the panel substrate and connected in parallel and series to join with the electrical output wires. Yes, that is less energy intensive than starting from scratch but it still consumes a substantial amount of energy, certainly much more than creating glass from sand and its added ingredients.
@@vernonbrechin4207 less energy required for something that already produces more energy than it consumes sounds like a good deal, it definitely isn't ideal but it is better than what we currently have.
As per usual, an excellent introduction and briefing on a specific issue. One thing I’d like to put forward for people to consider, all of the predictions concerning what percentage each technology will contribute to global consumption are carried out by analysts, researchers, and academics. I used to be one of them. Our methods are usually fairly conservative and represent the current understanding of things. However, every once in a while, a really, really big factor (in whatever it is we are modelling) is missed or overlooked. Of the sustainable energy strategies, only solar can just be delivered to a local site and bolted into the locality/grid. Hydro, wind, nuclear, geo thermal, etc all require considerably more extensive engineering. Solar can be loaded on pallets into shipping containers, shipped half way around the world, then taken off the pallet and just put into i mediate use. This ability to be a purely local scale means that solar will be selected all over the world by those that have the resources and inclination to ‘cut the cord’ from utilities. Its true that small hydro and wind turbines are possible - even practical in some cases - the conditions that suit these installations are nothing like as common as where solar is viable. Solar will be the largest source of electricity within a dozen or so years. The economics are nearly inescapable.
Completely agree. If for nothing else, the downfall of wind will be the severe constraints on copper in the coming decade. I think we are heading for a much more decentralised system of home energy. Bigger than that though, I would be stunned if we hit 38 terrawatts as the report implies. As fossil fuels become progressively more unaffordable/EROI falls offa cliff, I think we will struggle to increase our energy output. Unless fusion is solved.
@@howardmoon1234 Biggest limitation on wind power is siting. Finding locations where it actually makes sense... you need over 18.5mph AVERAGE wind speed for it to make fiscal sense (my numbers could be off, they are from decades ago). That is why it makes sense out in the straits with HUGE systems... because the other major factor is that the bigger the blades the more power it can generate... and putting the towers hundreds of feet off the ground allows the big props and gets you into higher air speeds. The systems that you see getting pedalled at the local fair that are about 20-30 feet tall aren't doing much of anything for generating power when you need it, where sizing up for blades that are 100's of feet long and getting them further up off the ground makes economical sense, but shifts it from a DIY operation to a LARGE SKILLED business operation where you need to know wtf you and your employees are doing for maintainence and repairs or people die. Only people dying from a solar electric installation are absolute idiots falling off rooftops or grabbing the leads from the panels when the sun comes out. Installed solar maintainence consists of keeping the panels clean(ish) and making sure no trees are growing up to block their view of the sun. With grid tied systems you completely eliminate the battery bank costs and problems.
@@scottmcelhiney323 it’s a bit peaky, we need to switch to mid day loading like EV charging water heating etc, remember when water was heated at night ?
The Electric Vehicles, EV, with its huge battery will be the killer invention. Particularly if they are automatically plugging themselves into the grid. The Daily drives are 7kwh and the EV batteries are huge upto 100kwh. A daily top up would be easy. Most homes only need 6kwh overnight. Generally every building is connected to the grid. Every rooftop can have 33m2 of solar panels. Upto 6.6kw. The dispersed ends of the grid are perfect for generating power from the dispersed solar energy. This situation is exactly what central power plants businesses do not want. If today's main grid transmission lines, and poles and wires, and power plants all need to be expanded ×3 to ×5 fold AND NUCLEAR FUELLED to stop CO2 and still power all the new electric transportation and machinery and homes and.... We are talking $BILLIONS AND BILLIONS. Decades and decades and decades. Government Garrentees on profits for up to 100years. 150,000 reactors around the world. Nuclear industries in every country. Nuclear educated operators on 3 shifts a day at every nuclear plant. 'Hommer Simpson' is not the type of operator that could be used. Every nation can build simple rooftop PV systems and use the EXISTING grid. 40% of grid power is to the homes. If the rooftop is now not taking power but supplying 40% then only 20% is needed to be supplied from elsewhere, The Nuclear solution will mean the risk of Nuclear weapons. And increasing military defence costs will ???? explode. These costs, $billions should be considered added to the nuclear power generation option.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 there is no way modern society survives without a massive proliferation of nuclear power. The maths, and physics, are totally unavoidable. We cannot produce industrial products without oil and very high heat. Electricity provides neither. Nuclear will be needed for the vastly expanded electricity grid and to allow us energy surpluses to be spent on mitigating climate damage. Solar and wind simply cannot get us there alone, as much as I wish they could
I wish I could've at first heard about how solar panels break or become unusable and at what rate before watching how they should be recycled. Is repair too difficult? Could there not be a lucrative market for second-hand panels?
Nobody is going to yearn for degraded outdated second-hand panels if they can get new, more advanced ones that can produce more energy given the same roof space.
When you said "solar park," I immediately imagined something like a theme park. Might be a good way to keep the heat down on the panels, model them into water slides and get profit from electricity AND admission
Everybody needs profit because imagine this: You were recycling solar panels all day You haven't made money at all Who is going to feed you, give you a house, some clothes etc.?
Thanks for the quick turnaround to drop a video on this topic. I read some really discouraging reports on how difficult the rooftop solar systems are to recycle, and the massive amounts of this toxic waste going into landfills in California and other US sunbelt states. Solar panel degradation is a lot less in cooler and wetter climates like the UK than it is in hot dry climates like the Southwest US, Spain, Greece or the Middle East.
what about areas that get hail storms? How about some nice gollf balll sized hail shattering your solar panels. and, what about tirnadoes and hurricanes? I wonder what happens to wind turbines in 100 mph winds.
I recently heard this issue brought up in a story on FauxNews. I assumed that it is an actual problem but I couldn't help but think that this is not really a solar panel problem (or "green energy" problem) - it is a waste management problem. There are so many other big problems with waste management in the US, from the lack of recycling in general, to people throwing fluorescent bulbs, small lithium batteries, and other electronic waste into the garbage.
recycling is a scam. Only thing worth recycling is aluminum cans. The reality is that all those things you put into the recycle at the end of day ends up in the landfill, same place as your garbage. In the past "recyclables" like plastic was sent to places like china and they just put it in a land fill or dump it in the ocean. There is no recycling of plastic. Only plastic that can be recycle is type 1 and type 2. But those don't get recycle for the same reason glass does not get recycle. It is just not cost effective and waste lots of energy. But since a few years ago china stop taking our garbage "recyclables" so they end up in landfills. So basically it ends up as garbage somewhere. It is better for us to have that control and be contain in landfills instead of exporting it to undeveloped countries cause that stuff ends up in the ocean. Solar panels are not the only waste. Wind turbine blades are also waste too, that stuff is not recyclable either.
It's unbelievable how, when ressources are being wasted with reckless abandon (i.e. PVs in landfills, no proper recycling strategies for single use packaging, overuse of gas and oil when alternatives exist, etc) it almost always comes down to profits, and not the actual good one product or method does compared to another. I hope one day we'll be able to transition towards a system that is more in line with with our needs and wants, and not so much driven by the endless pursuit of profits.
@@l.baileyjean3719 Yes, buy less! Go back to the hunter-gatherer society, no homes, no air conditioning, no cars, no TV, no, no , no....anything to buy. In short, let's massively breed ourselves like rats until THAT IS THE FINAL OUTCOME!
@@l.baileyjean3719 We each have our share of responsibility, but I dont think individual action is the biggest culprit for our current predicament. The profit motive drives companies not only to fulfill demand, but to actually induce it themselves, too. That's why we are having to fight for our right to repair our own belongings, why the fashion industry is increasingly relying on shorter and shorter trend cycles, why we're made to feel inadequate without the latest smartphones even though the improvements are only getting more incremental and superfluous. Why we're sold this vapid suburban dream of great big lawns and 'car freedom', when really everybody hates having to commute to work during rush hour, having to take extensive care of a monoculture that is of virtually no use to them, feeling like they have to install a swimming pool in their backyard just so their kids can do 2 or 3 laps at the start of the summer and then get bored of it, having to drive everywhere and having your kids rely on you as a parent to go anywhere until they're old enough to drive themselves. none of these 'individual desires' are actually something people really want or need, they're manufactured by industries that rely on them - and the overconsumption they induce - for profit. and try as you may to reduce your individual impact or your carbon footprint, our lives are so interlinked with the choices of our govs and corporations, it is impossible to decouple ourselves from them as individuals enough to actually reach sustainable levels of CO2 emissions.
That system which caters to your "needs and wants" has already been invented. It's called communism, and the major tool to achieve its goals is to reduce your "needs and wants" to nothing. With the green prophets making decisions, we're well underway to reintroducing this wonderful system in the West, just don't complain when it's back in operation.
@@glasslinger Yes, you need to use a lot of force and oppression to make all people "contribute" to such a system (and to reap off benefits for the few bosses who run it). Which is precisely what the current green ideology is aiming at.
Responsible human beings have been talking about this from the very beginning. There is no free lunch nor "sustainable" energy. The recycling of wind turbines and PV cells is inherently dirty and very energy intensive. We'll be constructing wind and solar farms just to run the recycling facilities. "Solar capacity goals" are nothing but a pipe dream. It's been hot here in the central US, and Texas is facing rolling blackouts due to lack of wind and cloudy conditions and are telling customers to not charge their cars and turn up their AC systems to conserve electricity. This "hot" spell we experience here in the central US is nothing new. It's been hot here forever and will continue to be regardless of how many wind and solar farms are built.
Even to someone like me with little understanding of tech industry, it's obvious that solar panels have high potential for profitable recycling. Solar panels are not just a huge growing industry, but they are constructed with a lot of materials that are energy-intensive to manufacture or mine (with the basic constituents being finite resources), and they have a highly modularised form that means it's easier to access the materials from solar panels rather than from something like a laptop. Not recycling solar panels isn't just the usual irresponsible laziness/ignorance that has become standard in our society (unfortunately), it's missing a big opportunity. Not just that, but by getting into recycling items like solar panels, it makes it easier for the industry to recycle many other similar items - like batteries - that will also be in high-demand in the years to come - all of which helps to pump more money into the recycling industry as a whole. I also wish our society would be responsible enough that monetary incentives weren't necessary, but I will honestly take whatever I can get.
dont worry about the expensive stuff - someone will look at it worry about the cheap stuff - one that no one can make any money by recycling it. it would have to be subsidised or all this cheap stuff would end up in landfills eventually. Already heard plenty of bosses of those recycling companies proudly announcing how good they are doing at recovering expensive stuff, conveniently omitting what is it they are doing with 95% of the cheap stuff that remains.
I read an article that said recycling is NOT popular right now because it costs 20- to 30 dollars to recycle a sokar panel and that it only produced about 8 to 12 dollars in reusable materials. And, that it took a special furnace for recycling. And that you had to be careful with them or they wouold shatter while trying to disassemble them. IF it was profitable, more companies WOULD be doing it.
@@MrBugman3009 Ah, you misunderstand. I said *potential* for recycling specifically because right now it is quite difficult - different companies are having success with different technologies but it’s still quite expensive. The problem is that the process has not been developed and mass-produced enough to come down in price (just like batteries and solar panels themselves when they were first introduced). However, solar panels and batteries have enough modular components of materials that are difficult to obtain/manufacture that once a recycling process is decided upon, those materials can be accessed and re-used in a mass-produced format. Because of their structure, these items are much easier to recycle than a laptop which is full of components of mixed materials, and the really precious materials are in tiny quantities. That was my point, I just didn’t want to make my post ridiculously long so I didn’t explain it fully. On an aside, I would just like to point out that just because companies aren’t using an industrial process, it doesn’t mean that process couldn’t be cost-effective or very useful once a company has adopted it. The problem is that adopting any new industrial process requires huge changes and investment of money - there are types of recycling that falls into this category.
5:04 Those mass solar arrays like that made my stomach twist in knots. And this is just small stuff compared to whats coming :( Take a moment to stop and think about the amount of heat that is retained locally (directly around the panels). Remember blue means that they are absorbing energy from the red/infra red end of the spectrum, whereas those red/orange white arid regions are responsible for some of the most significant net reflection of solar and heat energy back into the upper atmosphere and outer space. Those panels generally have an efficient of about 20%, so in other words 80% of the captured heat is being wasted to the air (environment) directly around those panels. Most will say, but yeah it's not significant.. But think about the proposed land coverage that is being proposed. People have an illusion that the polar regions are responsible for most of the heat reflection from our planet, but in truth these light coloured desert regions are on par with or may even exceed the net solar reflection of the polar regions. Just as a thought exercise: Would you feel comfortable painting significant portions of the arctic or ant-arctic black? Everyone seams so hyped on the Green energy train that they get caught up in the small positive parts of the bigger picture and don't stop to think about the net impacts of all of this :( This is not a criticism of the video creator. I am grateful that people do pay genuine interest into the topics surrounding this.
Everything has an impact. Action and Reaction. But most people just accept the simple "truth" without questions. What's most concerning is the fervor whith which they then defend their "truth", the less they know they more fervent they become. Some people still don't accept that Wind Farms kill birds. They won't accept secondary effects of Solar either.
@@pengjin3476 I often get called a climate denier, or anti ecology etc, but the truth is I do care deeply about how we treat our planet. When I see one sided "subjective" arguments I immediately get alarm bells ringing in the back of my head, as it goes against my own scientific understanding of the pursuit of "objective" truths. When I look deeper I realize that studies are often piecemeal and leave out important considerations. Sometime I find alternative and genuine studies that go against an asserted outcome of another study and realize that much of the climate mitigation solutions are based upon partial and incomplete studies. > It begins to feel more like religious "Faith" rather than genuine scientific pursuit. I want to see real and workable solutions to problems in the world, but genuine solutions must be just that, "Genuine" and based on identifying "genuine" problem that needs to be solved. We must also pat careful consideration to the possibility that a solution can very easily create more or far worse problems that we intended to solve. > DDT was a miracle solution to insect issues in farmlands and escalated food productivity to amazing heights relieving the burdens of food cost and raising many people out of poverty, yet quietly the same solution was killing the ecology and even returning via the food chain to reap havoc upon the very people the solution was meant to help. > Another Analogy: My car has badly worn tires and I keep offering the solution of changing the tires on a regular basis, but on more in depth inspection I discover that the car has some serious but hidden mechanical failures that are causing the tires to wear prematurely. I have offered a genuine solution to a genuine problem, but actually missed the true underlying problem that needed to be solved. > I admit that it is not easy, but we have to stop and think carefully, rationally and unemotionally. :)
Of course, once there's enough of them needing to be recycled, then there is enough economy of scale to actually invest in recycling them. Materials for these panels are also going to go up, so that's also an incentive to recycle. Life cycle on these things is actually pretty good. Most are given a 25 year warranty that guarantees at least 80% efficiency at that age. My old and cheap solar hot water system was uneconomical to repair at 16 years old, but that's probably saved around 70,000 kwh heating water during that time frame, saving about 16 tons of co2. Even for normal household use that's a notable impact when you look at those numbers. New, better quality one installed to replace it. Solar PV and inverter still going on well despite being 9 years old. No callouts, no repairs, no faulty panels or inverters. Replacing at 15 years is more about buying new stuff. Not buying new stuff you don't need is the best way to look after the planet.
when a new industry is in its formative operational stage, long term strategies relating to disposal and recycling must be an integral part of the process, such as incorporating the recycling process into the "facilities", in a manner of speaking such that the recycling process will be the beginning of the manufacturing process - not 2 separate and independent operations. When countries, like China, which have huge labor cost benefits see these advantages slip away with the standard of living increasing in their respective countries, this will help create a more competitive U.S. labor market and make manufacturing these panels in the U.S. more viable and with the recycling process already built in, the U.S. could have a jump on the materials side of the production process... Manufacturing in the U.S. should be the long term strategy as our labor force will be more competitive against the World markets...
Government needs to step in when it comes to recycling. The economic incentive just often isn't there, and even when it is, government needs to make sure not to disincentivize recycling with "environmental protection" regulations that do more harm than good.
Many installations are upgrading from lower output panels to higher output panels, and rather than scrapping/recycling the panels, they are sold to companies who sell used panels. Sure the panels may have been in service 25 years and hit their 80% output, but gang enough of them together and a home owner can have inexpensive solar power. So the "End Of Life" problem is a thinking problem where most seem to assume that at 25 years/80% output automatically pushes them into landfill scrap but that is not the real world possibility. The replacements do to outright damage can be low too -- fork truck speared a couple of panels I received and they still show output -- sure I'll use them on my experimental system but even if 50% output they will add electrons.
30 years for lifetime of a solar panel may be very low. I have not heard of many panels fail, except for mechanical damage. The average lifetime expectancy may soon be upgraded to 50 years or more. During that time efficiency may have increased and some might upgrade for more power on their limited space on their roof before end of life. This is creating a second hand market that may get new customers into solar energy. The owner of new panels can see the second hand market as an economical boost for their upgrade to a higher power installation. The end of life for the inverters may be a trigger for the upgrade, as I believe the inverters will fail long before the panels.
It's not about total failure, they are mostly not competitive to never ones. They get micro cracks and the glass suffers from UV light. After 30 years of use, you can barely gift them to someone with low energy demands. Forget that second hand market. You should probably be happy not to have to pay for disposal fees.
EDIT: For those few who cannot be bothered with context, I will add some. This video is about some of the downsides of solar energy. There are a fair number of people I have met, let alone on the internet, who think that solar means free, absolutely clean energy, which is not the case. This video talks about part of the problem, which are the panels. My response to this video is to ask about a video covering the other side of the coin, as it were: The batteries required to make solar viable in most scenarios. No, I don't care about talking on the topic of cars -- we've been talking about them for decades, and there are already myriad videos about it. No, I don't care to talk about oil products -- we've been talking about that for decades, too. No, I don't even care to talk about nuclear -- the most realistic option in many ways, and the one I am most supportive of, especially since I started ignoring the nonsense and fearmongering around the entire process. Just look at some of the majority-nuclear regions / nations who've designed their reactors well. The topic at hand is solar. I want to hear about solar. If you can't understand that, I've got nothing that can help you. ---------------- Haven't watched the whole thing yet...if you didn't address it here, can we also talk about the horrific impact making those batteries has on the environment, locals and wildlife anywhere near the mines and operations, etc? And their disposal issues?
while we're at it lets talk about the constant oil spills from big oil too, etc. Every energy sources has its downsides. Big oil has ensured global famines. Lets not make it any worse, aye?
@@0xsergy Ok, while we're at it, how about windmills. The concrete base alone when they start to weather give off CO2. A two megawatt windmill is made up of 260 tonnes of steel that required 300 tonnes of iron ore and 170 tonnes of coking coal, all of it mined, transported and produced by hydrocarbons. Then you have the potential problem that a windmill could spin (as long as its not to windy, they then shut down)until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in its construction. Then you have the problem of disposal once their deemed useless which is actually from the beginning. Not very green . Solar panels shut down if it's too hot. This whole green agenda is actually anything but when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it.
@@4faxache935 yes, all that sucks. If Big Oil took heed of scientists warnings in 1959 we'd have a lot more CO2 overhead to work with. As it sits we have less than 8 years to fix our energy situation.. FYI, windmills tend to pay off their carbon footprint in about 7 months so its not that bad given they last for 20 years...
@@0xsergy Less than 8 years! Our doom is upon us! I have been hearing the fear mongering for decades, now I'm deaf. Green power is a PC joke. And you are the punchline.
Even if the total efficiency of old solar panels falls 30-50% below their production optimum after 20-30 years of exposure to the sun and atmospheric elements. Surely REUSE before RECYCLE rule would be a very efficient way to make an extended life case for unwanted panels to be placed where their residual power can still be useful, by simply moving them to cheaper, sunnier, easily accessible locations with, minimal cost. Plus, dumping panels should be outlawed, with donations for reuse and then recycling for damaged ones mandated.
No, because the panels are already the smallest cost of installing solar PV. If you take used roof top panels and install these in an open field somewhere this is a very rough description of what you need to do: Make a business case. Borrow money or attract investors. Get permit for your desired land use and lease land from the government. Apply for all possible subsidies; maybe try to get some money from solar panel manufacturers so they can show they are responsible and reuse old panels. Find the people who want their old panels taken for reuse instead of land filled; you can maybe even get some of them free. Hire people to check old panels and figure out which are usable and which are not; landfill some of them anyway. Flatten everything, remove the top soil, backfill to an even slope and grade it with gravel, put down ducts and cables, build the electrical connection to the site, add junction boxes and inverters to step up to voltage (even 48 V panels you wouldn't want to transmit over hundreds of meters; the cables would become prohibitively expensive; probably they go to AC and step it up to a few thousand volts, before stepping it up to even higher voltage at the site boundary). Figure out some universal mounting system for oddly sized panels and build it with a variety of row and column spacings corresponding the average composition of panels you expect to be able to get. Fence in the site. Build some receiving station where panels can be offloaded from a truck and tested before installation. Then there is maintenance, spraying with weed killer, cleaning the panels which needs water, which means you need to build a well or go somewhere nearby and get water by tanker truck. Doing this isn't a trivial thing. Taking old panels looks more expensive than new panels even if they are free.
@@soylentgreenb Yep and do this for hundreds of acres of panels, generation after generation, and not to mention the batteries of some kind so people will have power for the 20 -15 hours in the day when the panels aren't making peak power. Solar with batteries is a good solution for a lot of people, but not all people, it will definitely take a good mix of carbon free energy sources, and a very robust and modern transmission system.
Another good point to raise would be, how likely are we to see a dip in the overall quality of SPVs across the board, which will certainly accelerate the issue?
You popped up on my UA-cam, glad you did!! I am 59, have a manufactured home. The providers in California do not include the NEEDED back up battery. I priced them around 10,000.00 USA dollars. I will never be able to afford battery. So, we said no. I did think about manufactured waste, but, you really opened my eyes. The batteries, oh crap, so much waste, the panels, good grief. Not sure any of this matters, Gaia is really trying to shake us off, like fleas...I believe we are way past tipping point, and very glad I chose not to have children. The next generation will not save us...they are being destroyed by cartel drugs. Homeless in USA, hundreds of thousands created recently, covid, and landlords. I used to work for a manufacturer of plastic. Those machines, the waste, we pulled parts that were on frames, the frame was waste you cut parts off. They closed in 2008. Jeannie J
I wholeheartedly believe that solar panels have a long future supplying homes and warehouses with green clean electricity, but the vastness of the solar farms that you highlighted for such limited and small amounts of power absolutely baffles me that people are taking large scale farms seriously. It's just not scalable. I believe the sun is the future of clean, reliable and sustainable energy but it's the reaction that creates the light that solar panels use rather than the light that's by product.
I personally champion commercial solar for this exact reason. Why cover a field that could be farm, natural or wetland when we have nearly 1/3 of the acreage of any given city as commercial warehouse, light industry, shopping malls and parking lots. Generate the electricity near the load, reduce the grid scaling required, improve redundancy, reduce transmission loss. Of course the answer why this is not happening and why there is so much obstruction to it is because the current grids are privatized monopolies that do not want to socialize the generation revenue they are enjoying. The grid monopoly needs to allow a large number of small end user producers to make this happen and they don't want to because they are friends with the big grid generators who want ROI on their massive coal and gas plants. Or investors who want ROI on massive field covering wind and solar projects. They are OK to have a few hippy weirdos doing a tiny bit of generation and pretend they support "end user green generation". But if some huge industrial and warehouse facility covers their acres of roof and parking lot with solar it will really bite into private generation company revenues. So what needs to happen is massive cross discipline, cross industry cooperation along with local government support to make it happen. Some business needs to allow the private generation company to install panels on their land instead of some field. Find some way of fairly compensating the land owner company and the tenant company and the solar generation company, while also complying with the need of the grid company, while also having support and fair regulations from local government. Which is all way too much work and coordination and cooperation to happen realistically. The other alternative is if there are places that already have socialized grid and generation, all we need is a few key points in the chain to give up a bit of political power to allow endpoint generation to happen at scale. But there are very few places in the world where this could be a reality as well. So we are stuck with our $$$ revenue driven grids which need to transmit power from outside the city into the city to exist. So they do not support large scale endpoint generation, banning it with regulations or just not supporting it with reasonable connectivity, or outing limits on it to prevent financial viability. All so their friends can do large rural generation projects with predictable ROI to transmit over the for profit grid to the urban user base. And kick a few $$$ over to local politicians to ensure this privatized monopoly obstructs any progress to a better system.
@@5353Jumper that's a lot to unpack there lol I'm guessing you're in the US from your reply and have to say we have it a little bit different in the UK. A lot of our new build housing is already fitted with solar and the UK government has rolled out a lot of schemes to subsidize the cost of having solar fitted to homes and warehouses etc. We can also sell back our unused energy to the national grid which helps keep the break even times down from the date of installation. However it's still expensive and as with most things green and renewable it keeps it out of reach for most. I totally understand how on both sides of the pond monopolies take the piss out of the end user for profit but the massive rise in energy prices we are having in UK and across Europe is directly attributable to successive governments listening to the loudest shouters for wind, solar and net zero targets which in reality simply don't work. Wind, solar and EV's have proven themselves to be expensive, unreliable and really quite a lot more damaging to the environment then we have been led to believe, tie that into exporting oil and gas production to Russia (in Europe) and sacrificing our own supplies to achieve net zero and we now arrive at the mess we are in right now. French have 56 nuclear plants and the cheapest electricity in Europe, we buy it off them to prop up the always reliably unreliable onshore, off shore wind and solar farms. If the west had spent as long and as much building nuclear plants rather than wind and solar farms we could have all been living in a home powered and warmed entirely by electricity and it would be cheap and plentiful.
@@martinroberts4391 you said it "National Grid". That is something that a few countries in Europe have but are extremely rare around the world. Most places either have a for profit grid or a corrupted national grid which is beholden to the for profit grid scale generation. This is the main factor holding back anything but token adoption of endpoint generation and storage solutions - except for the few European countries where rooftop solar is flourishing. Again it goes back to the basic fact that the reason NW Europe is flourishing right now is the highly functional democracies that allow things like the national grids to actually make decisions with some logic instead of pure greed of a few individuals. Appreciate what you have. Good luck in UK as it seems yours is starting to slip a bit. The rest of the world just needs to make due with applying pressure to our large grid scale monopolies and trying to entice them to do the right thing by making it cheaper to do, yet paying more for it, so they justify environmentalism with profiteering. So it is not really that European people adopt endpoint solar and the rest of us resist it or does not understand the benefits. It is that European people have grids and politicians that allow it while the rest of the world doesn't. Same goes for Nuclear generation which I am also a fan of. But kinda opposite. Until recently nuclear plants were massive meaning larger investment, more risk and longer wait for ROI. So basically they require government to make them happen and private enterprise avoids them. The only reason a few big plants ever existed in the US was their side benefit in weapons development. Now small plant designs are available, but there is still lots of obstruction from the fossil fuel industry as they need to get their ROI back on the existing gas plants before they consider new designs. Also side note: many of the massive solar projects around the world particularly US, Canada, Australia are not really plugged into the grid for household distribution. Most of them are actually powering petroleum industry projects so the petroleum industry can try to claim "net zero" on all the polluting products they produce. Basically a massive greenwashing scam. With the side benefit for oil companies that they steal investment, materials and skilled workers from what would be actual grid scale green generation projects that would actually reduce burning of fossil fuels.
They are "Replace-ables", not "Renewables". In no way is this "Sustainable" energy. I love solar, but the PV system has incredible flaws and causes for a massive amount of environmental damage. This needs to change.
Well, renewable aims at the energy sources and those are in fact renewable compared to the ending sources of fossile fuels. You had to compare solar panels with oil derricks/rigs etc. Oil rigs as example are simply sunk at the end of their lifetime.
Solar PV panels last 25years to an efficiency of 80%, and then keep making electricity for another 25years and maybe years longer. Electronics are incredibly reliable and central power companies see them as a real danger to their business model. Every building is connected to the grid. Every building has a roof. Every building will have an EV plugged in. Dispersed power supply is the biggest danger to central power supply businesses. JUST HAVE A THINK 🤔
I'd be interested to know what the growth rate of different renewable sectors is! If we need multiple terrawatts of solar it would be interesting to know what the current global production capacity is. At the end you mentioned 53GWs of new solar in China in 2021 which is half a percent of a terrwatt so getting that much energy sounds super daunting. Great video as always! It's always wild to hear just how much more forward thinking the EU is capable of legislating
You can get that on wikipedia, the growth of the installed capacity has been exponential over the last three decades, with one order of magnitude gained in 10 years. As things are, solar produce about 800 TWh, the world consumes 24,000 TWh (in electricity alone), assuming the trend will continue for 20 years or so those estimate look ok. The issue is that it is hard to predict when the tech will hit a bottleneck and stall, and that the energy needs are also growing at a pretty fast pace, and the electrification of transports will not help.
Could battery recycling plants be used to reclaim useful materials from solar panels? They don't have much to do at the moment so a dual purpose would make sense possibly adapting machinery they already have where possible. China and India could just give old panels to rural communities who live off grid instead of grinding up a 50%+ power producing panel.
These companies could go for the dual approach, but they'd need different process lines for it, so they shouldn't onl do it if they have cash to burn and want to do something similar to what they already do (but not the same). At this moment there already are dedicated recycling plants for PV in the EU, so it might not be that interesting here unles you do something like a merger.
There are about 20 grams (2/3rds of an ounce) of Silver in an Average Solar Panel. It doesn't make any sense why Solar Panels are not being recycled now and are being dumped into landfills.
The simple solution to the cost of recycling is to add that cost to the point of purchase and then use that revenue to immediately start recycling end of life panels.
The question is always , what is the more environmentally friendly alternative ? What other technology has a service life of around 30 years with comparably low maintenance? What other technology is without waste that cannot be recycled?
Geothermal is the answer to the world's energy problem. We simply need to R&D the tech to drill deeper so they can be used anywhere in the world. Inexhaustible, generates no waste, 100% clean energy, can be used to purify water, small real estate footprint, and operates 24/7.
There is no other option without waste. This is why the most efficient lowest waste option must be identified. And the identification is easy, nuclear power generates a fraction of the waste as any other source of energy and has the added benefit of just going away over time.
@@The1stDukeDroklar It creates far less than coal which is what a lot of people are moving back to, we've regressed when Natural gas is an evil we can have right no without the huge impact. The poster who said Nuclear is bang on the money and is the purest alternative.
I think we need to look at the end of life cycles on everything we create, solar panels being no exception. Regardless of their motivations, I'll celebrate the tiny win on more people at least giving this serious thought and potential action now. It takes a village. As naive as the wish may be, I'll also add that I would love to see humanity collectively do something simply because it's the right thing to do. Our obsession with one of our other creations (money) is slowly crushing us under the weight we've given it.
It's not that this is naïve it's just vague. What do you think everyone should do? Recycle? We already do that as much as the products available to us allow us.
@@matthewtalbot-paine7977 We can do those things, but I was speaking more from a higher level of prioritization. As he astutely pointed out, the usual draw for attention to a problem is the ability to make or save money by addressing it. In the order of prioritization, the money doesn't matter in the absence of a habitable planet to spend it on (form follows function). So, my thoughts were around humanity getting stuck on a rung of the ladder instead of going from the top (long term survival of the species) and working our way down.
Like having fewer children thus stopping the population explosion that is the root cause of all these problems in the first place! FAT CHANCE! We are doomed!
@@glasslinger yes for sure if their is no people their is no problem tought despit over population bring ever bad event the underpopulation not allow tecnologicaL advance and probleme reduction just because lack of manpower for basic task as historical exemple all empire who managed a growth of population solved it by expending teritorys
This is why I think we should focuss even more on reducing energy usage and waste in general. No matter how you create (or convert, if you want to be scientific lyrics accurate) energy, more energy means more resources, more money, more recycling ecs. Promoting good insulation, lower car dependence, general energy waste reducing acts like unplugging devices when you don't use them and even more specific actions against crypto and the obsession with graphics in gaming will all heavily reduce the burden on projects like this.
Your scarcity mindset is why I think most environmentalists are eugenecists. How about being pro human and pro abundance. Kurt covain yourself first, stop trying to make life a useless medieval slog.
I would rephrase that as more efficient use of energy. Saying reduce makes it sound like asking people to reduce their quality of living which is not something people will accept. We need to make what we already have more efficient.
It would maybe make economic sense for the huge solar farms to have their own recycling and manufacturing on site. If the transportation costs in both the recycling and manufacturing is almost nil due to proximity, it becomes a more viable option.
have you considered the size of the building to produce and recycle solar panels on site? Not to mention that they would NOT be making or recyling panels every day. And, they would need to ship the raw materials and hazardoous waste created in the manufacture f solar panels. That's as dumb as saying car makers should have a factory in every city instead of shipping cars around the country. It costs millions of dollars to buid a factory. And, you would need different machines to build the panels and different machines to recycle them. The factory would be HUGE.
@@MrBugman3009 How big are the factories that are making the panels now? It is not like car companies. Cars are used by everyday people not the company itself. Aren't the panel manufacturers and recyclers already shipping the materials both to and from plants? Why wouldn't they be making and recycling everyday? If production was set to produce 1/10th of the array every year than theoretically they could replace the entire system every ten years. It was just a thought on my part. As I originally commented, it is a "maybe".
While this is a long term concern, it is probably the finances of the fossil fuel industry that is making short term storage of glass waste a political issue, or an impediment to deployment.
Would love for you to touch up on the exponential increase of perovskite solar panels rather than the conventional silicon solar panels. The toxic metals that will be let into the atmosphere if those solar panels are not correctly disposed of may be a great issue. If anyone has any more info on this would love to hear your thoughts and ideas of low cost methods that can be used to correctly dispose of those perovskite panels in 3rd world countries.
Yeah perovskite panels sound great, but the fact they're made with lead and/or cadmium not so much. I thought we'd moved on from that short-sighted thinking after leaded gas or nickel-cadmium batteries, but i guess not...
Lead acid batteries are the most recycled product in North America. Because 40+ years ago the industry and government worked together for both the environment and keeping the supply chain available. The problem is who / where are the pv modules being built, and where is the incentive to recycle? Right now in NA, most recyclers are just grabbing the frames. But the other minerals in there need to be reclaimed as well.
@Eric C Thanks for the technical information. I know that efficiency and storage are issues we need to keep addressing with solar, wind and other technologies. I am very pro green technology, but I am also a realist. Yes, I do have a technical background, so I understand the issues fairly well. My personal opinion is keep the research going, and explore many different solutions. I think that future energy will be supplied by many different means (solar, wind, nuclear, fuel cells, etc.) Just what the mix should be, I don't know. But we should keep working at. Thanks, Eric.
@Eric C Yeah, 33% from the most sunny place on Earth, solar becomes way more efficient free of Earth's atmosphere closer to the Sun. Some companies want to beam solar energy from space down to Earth, pretty cool.
@Eric C The assumption there is that he is talking about the power per volume efficiency i.e. how much power you can get from a solar panel of a given size but there are other efficiencies to be made weight, materials, production costs. What we all really want is the cost of solar panels in whatever form they might take to go down per for the lifetime power they provide.
@@baneverything5580 Why is it impossible? Certainly not the battery price. A 5kwh battery that I just searched for was £4k which is about the cost of the solar system itself to work with such a battery. I mean maybe 98% can't afford £8k but then they probably can't afford £4k either if they are in that situation.
Thank you for addressing this. Would also be good to weigh how toxic the whole mining, transporting, making of, disposal of solar panels (and wind turbines) - especially as more and more people are encouraged to have panels & turbines - is it really doing good for the environment or is it just a cost saving thing so we can feel less guilty about our consumption?
Would love to see your take on Plasma Gasification as a transitional power solution. Given that recycling is being accomplished at such a low rate could it be more efficient to gasify these wastes and focus on reducing waste inputs like eliminating single use plastics in favor of glass or bio-based materials.
So, do the panels produce enough electricity to power the mining, refining, production, freight, installation, replacement, collection, recovery and back to production?
Ironically, cheap, carbon free energy from molten salt thorium breeder reactors could make the recycling of materials much more cost effective. But it would simultaneously eliminate the need for massive solar farms.
I think PV tech is the best alternative behind nuclear for energy production. Most panels promise >80% effi after 25 years. What people don't understand, is they don't blow up after that. If that loss in effi is important to you, you add 1 new panel to your 25yo installation to offset loss, and continue using it. You throw away NOTHING. It is only up to you whether you want to use ALL OF THEM even to a point of say 20% effi. In industrial it is different since installations are much bigger a d installing offset panels might not be an option. But not selling 80% effi panels second hand would be retarded. Są which panels are landing on landfill at the moment? Cause I don't see why any should.
Glass is arguably the easiest material to recycle, you just melt it and reform. Over here most (intact) glassware is sent to recycling centers where its cleaned and re-used. Plastic however is not.
My neighbor warned me about this a long time ago. I have no solar on the house (for now). The same issue comes with the wind mills. Most of the materials are not recyclable. The electric batteries for our cars with the lithium is another dangerous issue. What to do with those batteries when they deplete their ability. What about the mining of Lithium and its environmental impact. Or its impact on human and wildlife due to it's poisonous composition? There are other ways to reduce out carbon foot print. I'm presently building a solar hot air system with panels to heat the home during the day time. I already use a wood burning stove for evening and night time. We have a heat pump but it uses so much electricity to run.
What happened to Solar Thermal electricity? Not for rooftop on houses but for massive plants like you talk about, a parabolic troth reflecting heat onto a pipe of liquid seems a lot more sensible. Heat in tanks looses only 1% of its energy overnight so, that's your battery. and 80% energy from the sun is heat only 20% the right photons for PV. Blind Freddy can see a 50% efficiency solar thermal beats a 90% PV, there is more energy to grab. Also reflectors can be made of a single metal low tech and easy to recycle. What went wrong ???
It honestly blows my mind that landfills are still growing. I grew up next to a plant that burns garbage and sells the heat to nearby homes. This obviously relies on people having a convenient option to get rid of recyclables and stuff that falls outside of those groups like garden hose.
While in Japan, a company devised equipment to strip the panel aluminium off, then heat and scrape off the backing, silver and cells. The glass is reusable for new panels.
I've been in the solar industry for 5 years. My boss has been doing it for about 12 years. And we have in storage every broken or replaced module we've ever took down. My bosses logic is letting it go to the dump is backwards logic to what we do professionally. He saw the future of recycled panels and we are sitting on our old and broken ones. Granted, nowhere near the numbers explained here, but the forward thinking at the core topic
I wish governments would grant something like a storage grant, so such companies wouldn't have to pay tax on storage space used for storing PV panels. I think it might incentivize a lot more companies to do that rather than throwing them all away
Profit = waste, in effect, because the life cycle cost stops at the point of sale to the ‘consumer’. In reality nothing has been consumed yet the ‘consumer’ pays for disposal. All unconsumed waste needs sending back to the manufacturer to deal with because they have the infrastructure to process it.
Solar panels, also known as photovoltaic or PV panels, are made to last more than 25 years. In fact, many solar panels installed as early as the 1980s are still working at expected capacity today. Also reuse of components from panels is over 50%, just remember to send the damaged panel to an electric waste recycling center.
Let's put all the cards on the table. LET'S JUST HAVE A THINK. We have a puzzle with many parts and everyone is getting lost in the weeds No CO2 in the world, yes ? EV, electrical vehicles every where. Electrical every thing. Yes? Dispersed power supply or Central power supply An example, say AUSTRALIA, it is easiest set of facts. For DISPERSED power supply. 25million people 20million buildings connected to EXISTING grid 20million vehicles 25Gw installed fossil fueled power plants, 600Gwh daily. 30kwh daily capacity max. per building. EXITING power grid from far North Queensland to Perth 7,000klm 6.6kw rooftop solar PV system, 33kwh daily capacity per rooftop 100kwh battery in each vehicle, EV vehicles. Daily drive, or rush hour 7wkh, tiny. With every EV connected to grid 24/7/365. The automatic 'plug in' gizmo will be the killer invention for the EV. The EV battery will trade power and stability with the grid for money and profit. The big money and profit will be in the EXISTING grid. THE CENTRAL POWER SUPPLY. Nuclear, no CO2. EV, electrical vehicles and everything. Demand ×3 to ×5 fold increase. 25Gw is 80 SMR nuclear power reactors ×3 is 243 SMR ×5 is 415 SMR for Australia Decades and decades to build $1billion each. 415 plus, for future growth. Decades and decades to make a profit Government Garrentees forever. 7,000klm grid capacity to expand ×3 to ×5 fold. $BILLIONS AND BILLIONS. Poles and wires to the streets and homes and businesses capacity to expand ×3 to ×5 fold. $BILLIONS Decades to build out Government Garrentees profits. Monopoly control and profits. Monopoly political donations. Now let's look at the WORLD NUCLEAR power industries in every country on the planet. 70%of the world's population is in dictatorships. Mr Putin said he would use Nuclear weapons if any one tries to stop him from killing his neighbour's children. Mr Putin would effectively kill his own country's children when the nuclear retaliation, because of his use of nuclear weapons The USA is the biggest target in the world. The Military defence costs increase massively, ballistically. $BILLIONS and billions. 150,000 SMR power reactors around the world. DECADES AND DECADES AND DECADES to build. $BILLIONS AND BILLIONS AND Trained nuclear builders and Trained nuclear operators, 3 shifts, 24/7/365 for 150,000 nuclear power plants. 9billion people. The world's best have failed. All so expensive that you are locked in for decades, 60years to 100years. Monopoly profits to the power supply corporations, massive profits......... There are a few more cards to play, but you see the matters that are NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT. Solar is dispersed and the ends of the grid are dispersed. A building at the ends of every grid.
I worked in the waste management Industry for 15 years. And the amount of red tape is unbelievable and the environment agency is very uncooperative. One instance we were salvaging all the electrical items from going to landfill so could be recycled however it wasn’t on our license so we have to dump them all back into the landfill pile and they all got sent to landfill. This was about 25 tons a week
That is so sad. I try to recycle everything, even old screws etc go in my ‘metals’ bucket to take separately to our local recycling centre.on top of our usual recycling bag that the council takes, I have pots and bags for, plastic bags, batteries, cheese bags, blister packs Superdrug take these), cat food pouches and crisp/sweet/biscuit packaging. Oh, also Rymans recycle old pens.
This is the big dumb.
That’s so terrible.
@@billswifejo Just because you send it to the recycling facility doesn't mean its recycled.
Some regulations are too restictive. EPA does a lot of good stuff like clean air and water but recycling needs some serious work! Most of the stuff we recycle actualy gets thrown away and people like you who want to recycle shouldn't have an obsticles to doing so!
Genuine question, Why are solar panel manufacturers being made to take responsibility for their products but other companies are allowed to mass produce single use plastics and drink bottles with reckless abandon?
Why are oil companies not taking responsibility for the waste their products produce?
Big oil
They should ALL take responsibility
@@jimurrata6785 Hhhmm think there’s a reason the fossil fuels industry hired the same lobbying group that worked for big tobacco back in their lying days!
In EU electronics manufacturers and distributors pay for the collection and recycling of electronics from household waste recycling centers.
Most bottled/canned drink manufacturers also have to take care and pay for the collection and recycling.
Of course, the question is; "at what point do solar panels need to be replaced?" If current production solar panels have an output factor of 80% at 25 years, does it really make sense to replace them? For most applications, possibly the replacement threshold might be 50% or even lower and it would make more sense to add new panels to the installation to keep output at acceptable levels rather than replacing old but productive panels.
The useful life of current production panels might well be over 50 years for many installations now so the re-processing issue might be more of a rising tide than a tsunami.
This is what I was wondering as well, seems like PV output reduction over time has a similar question to electric vehicle battery degradation over time. I would like to believe that a panel having a second life somewhere else would be significantly less environmentally impactful that shredding it down to its constituent ingredients and making a new one.
80% of 30% efficiency remember
I got 2 replaced 280w panels for £50 each, they are big and went "out of life" as the supplier said which is why they were cheap, yet they still crank out expected power, I even saw 250w on my monitor the other day and it wasnt even setup at the optimal angle, id take 2nd hand solar panels any day of the week.
Very interesting. One thing we might be looking at in 25 yrs that might push early retirement is panel efficiency. You might have a sh!t load of panels you put in at 18% efficiency at new and are now degraded down to 80% capacity. But now there panels that are out that are maybe 30-40% efficient and life span is 100 yrs before 5% degradation happens... So maybe to change them out early is cost effective get more out of that solar space and then putting them on the used resale market for poor bastards like me that cant afford the new ones 🤣
Anyway -- fusion is just around the corner👍
Cheers
@@michaelstarkey9745 Not sure I understand your point. The 30% efficiency was taken into account when sizing the system in the first place. Yes?
Oh here's another important thing that I think you're missing: What is the environmental cost to make the panel in the 1st place and then to repeat the process and make a new panel after you've recycled your old panel to a different use?
@@SimonWoodburyForget Weissbsch et. Al did a study on the energy return on investment of solar. New panels barely break even at a ratio of about 10:1. Nuclear, however was shown to make over 70 times the energy over it's lifetime than what was used to put it up and keep it running. Recycling solar panels will probably reduce that ratio below sustainable levels.
@@Shaker626 the only issue is we have till 2030 to change the entire powergrid. Nuclear takes decades to setup and get running. We don't have decades. We have 7 years so solar is just to fill the gap while we get more nuclear plants up and running. Also, keep in mind nuclear has a huge carbon impact due to all the concrete required so it isn't quite as green as some companies claim(biased).
@@0xsergy Sweden was able to move away from coal in just 10 years by going nuclear. China and Korea build reactors in four to seven years today. It's only in the modern West where policy makers have become adamant in delaying the construction of plants has time been an issue. Furthermore, nuclear uses many times less concrete and steel compared to solar based on how much energy each source makes over its life, something that is tied to the EROIE ratio I talked of above, but is also independently verifiable with NEA stats in the USA.
@@0xsergy No it doesn't, you just need to use smaller more localized reactors.
Don't confuse ecologists with facts.
I have 2 panels where the glass has shattered. They both work well for my needs. I spread some clear Flexseal to stabilize the glass. The glasses broke like a car window. i.e: millions of pieces. None of the glass pieces are missing and the clear Flexseal stops the glass from actually falling out. Not perfect, but they still work well.
Good ad for the Flexseal.
broken solar panels are very harmful to the environment
A whole field of panels from a hail storm were scraped because the owners had no idea such a solution was possible.
Better question why isn't everyone made to clean the open mess. Then less garbage would be made & more thought process.
@@alexboros1751 i wonder if all the greenies realize how much toxicity is in solar panels when they break or its time to throw them away cuz they're worn out.
What might be a good idea is to create a market for used solar panels. Could make it easier for lower income people to become energy independent. Just because a panel has lost a lot of its efficiency doesn't mean it can't still be used.
If you decommission a large array of PV modules then you find that their degradation is not consistent. Some will have deteriorated considerably while others still have plenty of life left in them. What's more you can easily tell them apart with a degree of accuracy by a simple visual inspection.
So by simply grading the old PV modules you can make the idea for a second life even more compelling.
Love th humanitarian kind thought
That is the way to think 🤓 I love it 😍 and I agree “waste not, want not”
@JZ's BFF why? Most other products have used markets, why not solar panels? Not everyone can afford to buy one straight from the factory. Selling used ones at a discounted price also helps to reduce the cost of replacing the solar panels. When using something like a solar panel on an industrial scale you need it to be performing at a sufficient efficiency to be profitable. But someone who just wants to put one on top of this house, a used one may be the better option or only option they can afford.
Some sort of graded seconds would be great. I can think of numerous small projects where a older panel would work. As the mission isn't critical.
Companies like San Tan Solar in Chandler Arizona, sell used solar panels. Some time ago, I purchased 5Kw of solar panels from them for $1300 US (shipped). They have served me quite nicely. A solar farm, at end-of-life replacement, could stack used solar panels vertically on a large flat bed. Make arrangements in each city to have a "sale" location where citizens could buy panels right off the truck. Kind of like a taco stand. I found that one panel, parked in the shade, could recharge all of my cell phones and laptops! Some of these panels could be used as siding on barn and shed construction projects.
"Kind of like a taco stand" do we bring our own cheese wiz or are they going to offer sauces?
Reduce, reuse, repurpose, recycle ♻️
I think too often we forget about reuse and repurpose. I like the idea of finding new use for older panels. They might not produce as much power as when first made, but many will still produce a good amount of power suited for some second-hand uses.
Someone is gonna get stuck with the toxic side panels, and like asbestos end up same as asbestos entering. Burying it.
Was that $1300 including the necessary electronics to use it? It sounds like you don't have it wired up to the grid, so do you just let it run in DC?
Or line a small (maybe 500 gallons) water tank.with them to absorb the sun's heat, warming a household sized quantity of water.
One opportunity here that I don't see being worked on is an effective way of gaining a second life for old PV modules. Typically when PV modules are getting old you will get a few in an installation dying while the others around them still have lots of life left in them. Visual inspection of the modules can usually tell the good ones from the deteriorated ones.
For the large ground mounted solar farms it should be possible to extend the life of the PV modules when the array is approaching the end of its expected service life by grading the old modules and using the ones that are not showing signs of deterioration together in an array dedicated to getting maximum service life out of the old modules and only replacing a percentage of the arrays out to use new modules.
This is all predicted on there being a source of labor to do this work at a cost that makes this strategy cost effective.
*Give them away, or sell as scrap!* If nothing else, degraded panels can be sold as scrap or even given away to people who have more time than money, who can attempt to repair or just bridge across dead cells in the panels. Output voltage will be lower if cells are simply bridged, and that would not fit in with the mass-scale matched panels of commercial use, but could be just fine for private use.
@Richard L You know those pick-your-own farms? Give people a guide to identify degraded panels, number each panel, let people walk down 'older' aisles of the solar farm, and give them a cheap camera provided by the solar farm. They snap photos of panels that look degraded enough to buy, go back to the cashier for a quote, they disconnect the respective panels from the grid and you can pick them up with an IKEA flatbed cart.
I don't know, it would be fun to have something like this.
I would image eventually drones with AI would be advanced enough to determine most of the deteriorated panels.
Just like repurposing used EV batteries which would make dandy backups for PV installations.
every commercial enterprise needs planned obsolescence to roll.
That is why you see boom of perovskite panels - they are not significantly better, but just like EV cars, they are built to break down , with some irreplaceable component involved making them obsolete and not repairable .
Silicon solar panels are easy to repair, just like combustion cars. They are not perhaps super-efficient, but who cares, problem of efficiency is problem of overpopulation and if there is overpopulation, no tech will help anyway.
That is why just like "cash for clunkers" programme, industry will push to obsolete and "recycle" (read - remove from 2nd hand market) silicon panels, and replace them with disposable perovskite panels with more "acceptable" for 5 years lifespan (more acceptable for manufacturers, and they are who lay the cards).
Well made silicon solar panels, used with care, never break down completely. After 25 y they might have lower output - but if their owner cared to not overheat them above 70C, they will have 100% of their output.
So if you already have silicon - care for it like wise people care for their Porsches and Ferrari's, they might be soon not only out of production but even illegal.
You consistently hit a homerun with your presentations. Thankyou.
That’s great news that so many are active on recycling Solar PV systems. You have a lot of good statistics worked into the show. Thanks.
20 years here, 18 x 165W panels. 1 panel died during that period (it looks like it was actually damage at the time of installation that finally caught up with it). But now I'm in a situation where I want to upgrade the panels and the existing installation is the prime roof space. So I am actually DIY'ing replacing the existing panels with 16 x 320W panels and as I get further into the project it looks like I will be able to almost double production due to modernization of the technology (14% to 21-22% efficiency) plus slightly larger panels that still never-the-less fit on the old rails.
What to do with the old panels though. 20 years old. All working quite well except for the one that died. Well, it turns out there is a good solution. Peak grid use occurs in the 4-9pm time frame. Southern-facing panels (maximum daily production where I live) are good until around 5pm before dropping off precipitously. But WESTERN-FACING panels can produce good power all the way until around 7pm, meaning that I can produce power for a good chunk of the peak grid use time period. Western-facing panels don't give you the same full production... not even close. But they give you production at a critical time and its the perfect use for the old panels.
I'll only be recycling one panel (one out of the 18 original panels died in the intervening 20 years, and I didn't realize it because both strings of 9 were on one MPPT. But as part of the new project I upgraded the string inverter which now has 3 MPPTs and the bad panel stuck out like a sore thumb).
@@ericeric9208 I've started experimenting with panels on the back deck to try to fill-out the late-afternoon generation. It should be noted that the main south-facing system still generates 25% of its 12:30 peak at 6pm. So its still an option to home owners to just fill their best roof space with panels regardless of the direction and still be able to match the home's demand at 6pm.
On a panel-by-panel basis the total West-facing generation is far less than the main system (it gets no sun due to house shading until 1pm), but the panels do produce around 25% more after 2pm or so. Still, after 6pm it again tapers off quickly and there isn't much of a point trying to capture optimal power after that. And depending on the utility tariff, another X% past the peak start time. It seems worth doing to me... even more so for people with unobstructed western-facing areas.
Another option is to load-shift a small amount of power with a battery. Not a full-fledged backup battery, but instead a grid-tied load shifter. For efficiency, Solar -> DC charge controller -> battery -> grid-tied micro-inverter fed from the battery. With a timed switch to turn the micro-inverter on at 4pm and off at 10am. It could be scaled to any size but to avoid annoying the utility the power should be less than the house's vampire current. So, 200W to 500W in my case. I kinda like this concept. It would be a fun project, anyhow. And inexpensive due to the low amounts of power involved.
@@ericeric9208 Found it on Ali. What an interesting device! Yes, that is precisely what I was looking for.
I'm not worried about daily-cycling the battery, it will be LiFePO4. Plus no reason to drain it all the way each day either.
You can also recycle the working panels by just giving them to someone else who is interested but unsure, use a spare panel or three to get more people into solar!
@@fisharepeopletoo9653 Yes, I know a person who would like a few of my old panels. They aren't useful for any serious 'new' installation... too old and the power density is too low. Plus they weigh 2x as much per watt as a modern panel... 40lbs for a 20-year-old 165W panel vs 40lbs for a modern 320W panel.
But there are a lot of people out there with DIY systems and mounting space where any solar panel helps.
-Matt
Dave thanks. Here in Australia the sector is so mature that plenty of people are on their third system. The original 1500w systems are selling for between zero and $250 AUD and are replaced mostly for higher capacity systems. Among the presumably vast majority of panels with useful life remaining, the worst case should be that instead of transport to an extraction site, they go as ballast in shipping containers to the countries that will benefit the most from them.
I will view with suspicion any decision-makers who appear to favour destruction over ongoing use where possible.
I work in the industry in aus. They all end up in landfill. The few companies that claim to be able to “recycle” cannot, and have dubious histories. The entire industry is full of conflicts of interest and outright scams. Mostly set up by previous government with blessing of opposition.
Amen sir
@@questioneverythingalways820 Sorry to hear. It upsets me how much stuff that opposition let go through to the keeper. I tend to vote for them but this time I wanted them in a minority government to be forced to act and to cut out some of the BS.
1500w is 4 panel's in Canada. And that's not even efficient panels.
It's Ezy to send those panels away wile they still work rather than recycle in Australia people are more expensive than panels in Australia
The US needs to add a recycling charge to any imported panels, especially if US manufacturers and/or installers are going to be responsible for recycling the panels. The money could go to developing efficient means of recycling and the building of recycling plants.
PV can be used to bult house in cold countries.. the glass will trap heat and keep home warm.. need to make a standard frame wall where the panels can be fitted to create structures.
You are thinking,
I like what you say about using the panels to gather heat in cold latitudes.
Keep posting, there are many vested interests who want nuclear power plants for the world.
Mr Putin shows one of the costs of the nuclear solution.
A subject I always address the shelf life of solar panels never addressed. Great video!
Great program!! I've been recycling electronics in Phoenix, AZ. for over 10 years. I don't have solar on my house, but many of my neighbors do. I'm hoping these recycling programs get started sooner rather than later! Hope you do more programs on recycling! Take Care, Jim
Thanks Jim. Much appreciated.
I remember estimating how much energy it cost to produce the silicon used in a PV panel. I recall thinking that if you already had silicon (as opposed to silica), the energy cost dropped substantially. The funny thing is, it's all energy cost. And if energy is practically free due to PV panels, there is little incentive to do it. Even if we did "recycle" them... it seems most recycling has landed in the landfill for the past two decades.
Yep it is amazing how little is recycled, about the only thing we do right in a decent amount is low voltage lead acid car battery recycling, but even that is not exactly a "clean green" process.
The lower the energy needed to produce a new solar panel the more profitable the new solar panels potentially can be. The energy is never going to be free, so using less is better.
@@anydaynow01 we are moderately decent at recycling aluminum.
Yeah a lot of councils send stuff that people have separated into recycling bags to landfill.
We live in a country run by absolute lunatics
Optimism is sweet but, Humans been filling lands with garbage for centuries, now. No kidding. It's insane to dump garbage in our Oceans, too, but, it's still happening. And, plastics cannot be "recycled", yet. Somebody better invent "garbage control" faster?
the solar farms rotate replace their panels and sell them used. i purchased such panels, high efficiency 350W ones for $100 each delivered (16 units on a pallet). i have had them for a few years and they are generating higher than their rated power even now. for those of us who have the space, it makes sense to buy used and just add as the old panels generate less. at some point probably when space becomes an issue, we could rotate the weakest units out while adding newer units. as the panel efficiency keeps going up and perovskite keeps getting better and recycling of the old units improves, we should be able to minimize the environmental impact.
In Australia all rooftop solar must be installed by a licenced electrician and it is even illegal to change a leaking tap washer ( people do change washers even though its illegal and the union let it pass but they do go after businesses etc ) - 12V for caravans etc is ok for the handyman
This week I am having 17 x 390 Watt solar panels installed. It's great to know that they could last 30 years, but as a concerned environmentalist I needed to know that they will have a good end-of-life plan. They do, and should be almost fully recyclable in 2052, when the Rystad article says that the market will be worth $80bn! I will be keeping a close eye on when the kWh price matches what I could have done just by buying the electricity, hoping it will be around 7 years or less from now.
390 Watt for a panel is quite a lot! Usally they have 360-370 Watt in Europe.
@@patrikschurmann6610 it is, but that's the sticker rating and I am getting just under 6kW in full sun, with 3 facing directly East, 3 facing West and the other 11 South. They're made by Trina.
Great inspiration for me - thank you for this video. Michael, central Poland.
Seems like a good product to recycle. Lots of extremely similar items in a batch.
At a very minimum, the aluminum (or aluminium, over there) can be salvaged easily. The aluminum frame can get you a couple of bucks per panel. That part is already profitable. extracting the silver should also be, currently, profitable, though taking a few more steps. The silicon, not so much. Its not just a simple alloy. You have to recreate the PN structure, and remove the doping compounds before that silicon can be reused. That's were most of the PV cost is.
FYI: as of 2020, new solar panels, at retail (not wholesale) prices came out to ~$0.70/watt. I saw some stupid Tesla ad claiming they could do ~$2.50/watt, installed. So they are charging more than $1.80/watt to install the thing. That's $18,000 for a 10KW setup, excluding the $7000 panel cost. "Just have a think" about learning how to do it yourself ! Its not that hard.
it may not be hard but in England, if you want to export excess energy to the grid, the installation must be done by an approved installer... k'ching!
The frame will get yoy a few cents IF you can sepeeate it and clean it. The issue is the silicon. We need to re use this. BTW, older solar modules contain about .75 ounce of silver.
My state requires an installer do the work and not the home owner
What would be useful is really low-cost microinverters, to allow a random collection of used panels to provide useful power
Or alternately, an entrepreneur can "recycle" used panels by testing them and grouping them into matching output sets and flipping them as bargain panels with known performance parameters.
There are already dc to dc converters for solar panels that normalize the output for individual panels (so a shadow on one panel doesn't effect the whole array), those should be able to deal with different panels.
Switch to dc hahaha
My micro inverter cost me £30 and I bought it like 5 years ago so no clue what you mean.
End of life means 0 volts or 10 volts?
Still using same four panels to pump water from 100ft. deep well for 37+ years now ( replaced pump 4 times in that time)😮
Im skeptical. This is reminding me when the plastic industry was taking a PR hit because of pushback on single-use plastic. The plastic industry decided to create a committie and claim that recycling was not only fesible but potentially profitable. But in reality, all recycling is done at a loss and the majority of plastic produced isn't even recycleable. Of course people who want to make money will try to paint everything in the best light in order to ensure their recycling monopoly.
But don't worry, it will for sure be a great way for some to siphon some government (= taxpayer) money without any actual success or environmental impact. The only "solution" offered by the government will be to impose new taxes on the PV industry, making the future production prohibitively expensive, much in line with the current "sorry, the good times are over, you just gotta make do with less" green agenda.
That's a really stupid and american take on this problem. The immediate costs of production may be lower but in the long term producing new and throwing away usable plastics will harm the environment way more and will therefore become much more expensive when considering the indirect costs.
Most of my family in Philippines would love to have PV modules on their homes, they simply can't afford them and must go on buying dirty electricity for high prices. Used old ones would take stress out of the grid, lower pollution and give people a reliable source of energy for the most important devices.
I have heard long ago that the only reason there wasn't any recycling going on was the lacking economy of scale. It's always been clear that things would change once there was mass adoption of solar panels and therefore anyone who holds this up as an argument against solar is arguing in bad faith.
People that argue against renewables only argue in bad faith.
The only argument is "but we did so much work to stop progress here!"
Recycling isn't easy or cheap. Just look at plastics, paper, batteries, etc. I think it's reasonable to have some anxiety about the practicality and effectiveness of recycling solar panel materials. To say someone is arguing in bad faith means they are deliberately lying or misleading, and saying that anyone who questions whether these materials will ever be recycled efficiently are arguing in bad faith is, ironically, arguing in bad faith. Hypocrisy is the most human trait.
I think the reason is that each of the freaking things weighs 20kg and is 1x1.7m big, even transporting these beasts efficiently to recycling sites is expensive.
@@clray123 If we can afford to transport it to a shredder, we can afford to transport it everywhere.
Or how light do you think copper cables, steel or paper is?
@@christopherg2347 only true if the recycling is done at the same place as the shredding
For perspective, coal ash is 13% of total landfill in Australia. Contruction waste from buildings is the largest fraction.
Moving to wind, solar and batteries will reduce landfill if we didn't bother to recycle the materials.
It's schroedingers material problem - either the minerals are too scarce and expensive to meet our needs, or it's a gigantic mountain of terrible waste materials. Both arguments are bullshit.
Of course, you are not counting the extraction and waste of mining the materials and manufacturing of the panels and batteries in the first place. It is also a geopolitical problem since most renewable equipment comes from China which doesn't have our best interests in mind. World solar production is about 3.1%. Maybe we double that. More than that is probably not economically a good idea.
@@mikedrop6859 Obviously I include the material inputs from manufacturing. Otherwise wind and solar would have zero material use.
@@gronkotter It could be both energy sources are viable depending on situations? I am fine with a few percent of solar and wind, but the greenies want 100% renewables and that is not doable or good.
The Bhadia Solar Park in India mentioned as large but in relation to Australian solar panel station is larger
The site, chosen because it's one of the most consistently sunny places on Earth, would be home to a mind-boggling 17-20 gigawatts of peak solar power generation and some 36-42 GWh of battery storage.
To give you a sense of scale, that's nearly 10 times the size of the world's current largest solar power installation, the 2.245-GW Bhadia Solar Park in India, and more than 30 times more energy storage than the last "world's biggest battery" I wouldn't say solar panels are useless, they might be in Germany but not in Australia.
Singapore uses 15% of their power from those Solar Panels, they just ran a very long cable to Singapore from Australia to do it though.
$30 billion project.
as these solar farms increase in size, we aught to be able to determine the detrimental aspect of such places by measuring how much their temperatures rise. if cities are hotter because of less vegetation so huge numbers of solar energy absorbing panels will likely raise area temperatures. people should study this!
They will measure the temperature and they will conclude that climate change is worse than ever so we have to build more solar farms. Haven' t they recently measured the record breaking UK temperatures next to tarmac located in two airports? Also, what about the space that solar farms occupy? I hope that ppl will realise that if CO2 is the demon, then nuclear energy plants is the only exorcism that can be work for a more prosperous humanity.
@David Roads Hmm I mainly talk about crops. Animals can co-exist with panels but my guess is that you have to limit your choices here to sheep, since cows are too big and goats are too dangerous.
Did I miss the part where he said how much energy and hydrocarbons are expended in these solar panel recycling processes? Don’t think you can realistically have a chat about it without addressing that point.
Solar panels like battery storage slowly decline over time. A reduction of 10 or 25% production or storage is not a big deal after 10 or 20 years. They still will work but will be some what less productive. Oversize the installation by 10% when installing them and then don't worry about them for many, many years or decades. I do agree however that all products need to be made with recycling in mind at the end of their useful life. Everything needs to be recycled. Recycled materials need to be used in the manufacture of ALL products.
I agree. What I call 'operpaneling' - startng with more theoretical solar power than the invertor can handle before limiting has big advantages. It enables the system to produce more steady output over the day, with the invertor limiting the power during the peak hours of sun. This may seem wasteful but it isn't because it avoids running the invertors well below full power for most of the day, while overloading the grid during the peaks. In the UK we are only permitted to feed 16A per phase into the grid (around 4kW), but with overpaneling and invertor limiting a lot more energy can be put to the grid without overload. It extends life too, as you say.
On industrial scales what is oversized today is undersized tomorrow.
Then the roof needs to be replaced and the panels removed anyway, or the building is sold to someone who will tear it down and build something else, or land use changes and a big solar farm isn't feasible there anymore or any of a thousand different things. Technical life span is very different from real world life span.
Use recycled products in the medical field?
I’m in solar, don’t replace them, just add more if you have the space, to up the voltage. They never stop producing, centuries down the line they’d still generate DC electricity. Just not a lot.
Good info. Thanks. I'm hearing good things about 'second life' markets too.
Acre is money though
The efficiency of solar panels eventually dies out. They do have to be replaced after their no longer generating power.
@@ericeric9208 isn’t that a crock but typical of our government who has to have allowed that to occur.
I got PV in 2018 & love it. I've been saving money over the past months by only doing all the GPU computation work during brighter days. I certainly don't want my panels to go to landfill - hopefully in 20 years time it will be easier to kickstart the recycling process.
Someone recently made a argument that it might be better to use computers for heating in winter.
The computational power could be turned towards crypto mining to offset power cost. Or maybe donated to science.
@@christopherg2347 yes I used to do this & still do to some extend -science & medical applicarions are valid reasons, NOT crapto
It won’t just be your solar panels it will be batteries as well
It's almost like every "green solution" that will supposedly save the planet has flaws that mean it won't save the planet after all. Could it be that there are simply and actually way too many humans on the planet for the planet to sustainably support? Yes, it definitely could.
This is very interesting, thanks! You should also HAVE A THINK ABOUT foamed insulation. There is a tsunami of that coming as well and it does not have other inherent value. With buildings having a life span of 50 - 100 years and foam insulation lasting thousands of years - we are pushing our problems on to the next generation again, just like lead paint and asbestos.
The silicon doesn't go bad on the panels. Its the printed silver ink lines (conductors) on the panel that will exhibit work hardening and cracking due to daily temperature cycling. If you could paint new silver conductors on the cells, you could breath new life into an old solar panel.
And the process of electrocatalitic decay would be much more extensive and quicker. Dissimiliar metals and all that
this is a generalization, there are ofc many panels whose silicon has been scuffed and/or cracked. it really depends on local environment
@@shrubby-ov4yw thought it went without saying that it wouldn't be dissimilar..
@@VeggieRice oh no? What are the anodes mounted on steel ship hulls made from? Aluminium which has a lower electrical conductor in comparison to silver or gold. Combine that with the materials that make up a solar panel then yes the dissimilar metals effect would be much greater. The cell mounts would degrade and power loss would increase. Not to mention the huge cost and environmental impact of mining huge quantities of silver versus aluminium.
@@shrubby-ov4yw If you think that ship building and solar voltaic are similar in composition or craftmanship, i'm afraid this convo is at an impasse, friend. and i agree about the silver vs aluminum impact.
tbh i'm putting an unnatural amount of hope/faith in the new perovskite solar cells coming out. Really hope the industry swings in development of that type of solar energy to take these kinds of metals sourcing out of the picture
The true nature of this problem can only be assessed when we have some vital information - how does panel efficiency drop versus time? Does it carry on or plateau? How do different panels differ in this respect. You don't mention the need to assess when a panel is to be removed. This needs a complex calculation of energy loss versus cost of replacement minus scrap value integrated over future time. For example, if a panel's output falls by 10% and then levels off up to 30, or 50 years, there is a good argument for keeping it in service and making up the loss with extra panels on the invertor string.
In the UK, there is a case for what I call, 'operpaneling' - starting with more theoretical solar power on a string than the invertor can handle before limiting has big advantages. It enables the system to produce more steady output over the day, with the invertor limiting the power during the peak hours of sun. It also means that fall in output is reduced with age. This may seem wasteful but it isn't so bad because it avoids running the invertors well below full power for most of the day, when the sun is away from optimal direction, and thus not making best use of their capability. It also avoids overloading the grid during the peaks. In the UK we are only permitted to feed 16A per phase into the grid on domestic systems (around 4kW), but with overpaneling and invertor limiting a lot more energy can be put to the grid without overload.
I have an 8kW system feeding my two-phase mains. It has never exceeded 7kW in peak sun (except on cloud edges - a known phenomenon whereby the bright cloud acts as a 'second sun'. In the recent heatwave, when air temp reached 36C the panels felt very hot, and output was down to 6kW in peak sun. Again, a known phenomenon, little talked about, that might be more of a problem in hot countries. Ageing is very likely to be speeded up at high temperatures too. Might it be worth rear water cooling (and maybe finding a use for the heat - such as to heat swimming pools?
"Might it be worth rear water cooling (and maybe finding a use for the heat - such as to heat swimming pools?" I looked into this in late 2013 for my Massachusetts home. There is a German solar manufacturer that was integrating solar panels with water cooling. The amount of panels I needed to heat the pool in the shoulder months (to lengthen the 2-3 month pool season in my northern climate) was too expensive and I didn't have enough roof. I just ended up with 38 solar panels, a 10Kw system, and no pool. Unless the kiddie pool counts, then I do have a pool.
@@markvalery8632 Interesting, and I didn't know that such panels were available. Yes, I did have doubts, and though I have 8kW of ground mounted panels, they are some distance from my (small) pool. Of course if some sort of cooling did greatly extend useful life of the panels, as well as preventing power loss, then it might worth considering in hot climates.
It depends on how much load you put on them! I loaded mine to 90 percent capacity and they lasted about 10000 hours!
@@gags730 8 years 6 months, 38 panels. 1 panel failure within the first month. 4 Enphase micro inverter failures of the total timespan. Total system degradation might be 5% looking at my yearly outputs, but the variability due to clouds and snow is greater than the degradation. If I look at the best production day each year (late April to early May), I can say that maybe there is a 2.3% reduction.
There is actually a lot about modeling the losses already in research. There’s immediate failures mostly due to manufacturing defects then slow degradation. You can track down that online in many papers.
If there are ways to build solar panels in a way that makes it more easy to separate the materials for recycling, it might be a good idea to get producers to implement them.
I broke even around year 8. Unfortunately the batteries don't seem to hold up like the panels. We will get hammered with the current price of batteries, so we don't know if we'll be replacing them. Nuclear and natural gas are seeming to be the way.
Saw this coming years ago. Same issue with wind.
As usual your assessment of this issue was excellent. I hope the recycling rapidly picks up pace. The projection, up to the year 2050, demonstrated a lack of realism.
I'm aware of the energy that goes into the production of ultra-pure N and P type doped polysilicon. Once fragmented it will still take much energy to reconstitute the grown solar cell structure.
Cheers Vernon.
Silicon, like glass and aluminum, takes far less energy to re-refine previously processed materials than to process virgin materials. Recycling the silicon after stripping it of any useful materials would take far less energy than starting from fresh.
@@cacaokingdom3122 - Thank you for that clarification. When you state that starting from fresh I assume you are referring to starting from quartz-rich sand and carbon feed stocks. That is very energy intensive. If one is starting from broken up solar panels then much energy still needs to go into creating new solar cells, generally more then the finished glass and aluminum frame materials that make up a finishish panel. Currently, isolating the used solar cells from the frame material is labor intensive.
Even if one starts from isolated used solar cells that material needs to be refined to remove the doping materials and get it to the extreme level of purity needed to grow large crystals at high temperature. Then the crystal has to be sliced in to thin wafers. Those then need to be highly polished before being placed in a vacuum chamber to be infused with the N and P type dopants. After that the conductors need to be applied to the surface. Then the fresh cells need to be arranged on the panel substrate and connected in parallel and series to join with the electrical output wires. Yes, that is less energy intensive than starting from scratch but it still consumes a substantial amount of energy, certainly much more than creating glass from sand and its added ingredients.
@@vernonbrechin4207 less energy required for something that already produces more energy than it consumes sounds like a good deal, it definitely isn't ideal but it is better than what we currently have.
@@garethbaus5471 - Agreed!
As per usual, an excellent introduction and briefing on a specific issue.
One thing I’d like to put forward for people to consider, all of the predictions concerning what percentage each technology will contribute to global consumption are carried out by analysts, researchers, and academics. I used to be one of them. Our methods are usually fairly conservative and represent the current understanding of things. However, every once in a while, a really, really big factor (in whatever it is we are modelling) is missed or overlooked.
Of the sustainable energy strategies, only solar can just be delivered to a local site and bolted into the locality/grid. Hydro, wind, nuclear, geo thermal, etc all require considerably more extensive engineering. Solar can be loaded on pallets into shipping containers, shipped half way around the world, then taken off the pallet and just put into i mediate use.
This ability to be a purely local scale means that solar will be selected all over the world by those that have the resources and inclination to ‘cut the cord’ from utilities. Its true that small hydro and wind turbines are possible - even practical in some cases - the conditions that suit these installations are nothing like as common as where solar is viable.
Solar will be the largest source of electricity within a dozen or so years. The economics are nearly inescapable.
Completely agree. If for nothing else, the downfall of wind will be the severe constraints on copper in the coming decade. I think we are heading for a much more decentralised system of home energy.
Bigger than that though, I would be stunned if we hit 38 terrawatts as the report implies. As fossil fuels become progressively more unaffordable/EROI falls offa cliff, I think we will struggle to increase our energy output. Unless fusion is solved.
@@howardmoon1234 Biggest limitation on wind power is siting. Finding locations where it actually makes sense... you need over 18.5mph AVERAGE wind speed for it to make fiscal sense (my numbers could be off, they are from decades ago). That is why it makes sense out in the straits with HUGE systems... because the other major factor is that the bigger the blades the more power it can generate... and putting the towers hundreds of feet off the ground allows the big props and gets you into higher air speeds. The systems that you see getting pedalled at the local fair that are about 20-30 feet tall aren't doing much of anything for generating power when you need it, where sizing up for blades that are 100's of feet long and getting them further up off the ground makes economical sense, but shifts it from a DIY operation to a LARGE SKILLED business operation where you need to know wtf you and your employees are doing for maintainence and repairs or people die. Only people dying from a solar electric installation are absolute idiots falling off rooftops or grabbing the leads from the panels when the sun comes out. Installed solar maintainence consists of keeping the panels clean(ish) and making sure no trees are growing up to block their view of the sun. With grid tied systems you completely eliminate the battery bank costs and problems.
@@scottmcelhiney323 it’s a bit peaky, we need to switch to mid day loading like EV charging water heating etc, remember when water was heated at night ?
The Electric Vehicles, EV, with its huge battery will be the killer invention. Particularly if they are automatically plugging themselves into the grid.
The Daily drives are 7kwh and the EV batteries are huge upto 100kwh.
A daily top up would be easy.
Most homes only need 6kwh overnight.
Generally every building is connected to the grid.
Every rooftop can have 33m2 of solar panels. Upto 6.6kw.
The dispersed ends of the grid are perfect for generating power from the dispersed solar energy.
This situation is exactly what central power plants businesses do not want.
If today's
main grid transmission lines, and
poles and wires, and
power plants
all need to be expanded ×3 to ×5 fold
AND NUCLEAR FUELLED to stop CO2 and still power all the new electric transportation and machinery and homes and....
We are talking
$BILLIONS AND BILLIONS.
Decades and decades and decades.
Government Garrentees on profits for up to 100years.
150,000 reactors around the world.
Nuclear industries in every country.
Nuclear educated operators on 3 shifts a day at every nuclear plant.
'Hommer Simpson' is not the type of operator that could be used.
Every nation can build simple rooftop PV systems and use the EXISTING grid.
40% of grid power is to the homes.
If the rooftop is now not taking power but supplying 40% then only 20% is needed to be supplied from elsewhere,
The Nuclear solution will mean the risk of Nuclear weapons. And increasing military defence costs will ???? explode.
These costs, $billions should be considered added to the nuclear power generation option.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 there is no way modern society survives without a massive proliferation of nuclear power. The maths, and physics, are totally unavoidable. We cannot produce industrial products without oil and very high heat. Electricity provides neither. Nuclear will be needed for the vastly expanded electricity grid and to allow us energy surpluses to be spent on mitigating climate damage. Solar and wind simply cannot get us there alone, as much as I wish they could
I wish I could've at first heard about how solar panels break or become unusable and at what rate before watching how they should be recycled. Is repair too difficult? Could there not be a lucrative market for second-hand panels?
Nobody is going to yearn for degraded outdated second-hand panels if they can get new, more advanced ones that can produce more energy given the same roof space.
When you said "solar park," I immediately imagined something like a theme park. Might be a good way to keep the heat down on the panels, model them into water slides and get profit from electricity AND admission
While this is a fun picture, Solar panels do not make good structural material.
And we did actually look into walkable solar panels.
Everybody needs profit because imagine this:
You were recycling solar panels all day
You haven't made money at all
Who is going to feed you, give you a house, some clothes etc.?
You need a new business plan, and better technology.
Thanks for the quick turnaround to drop a video on this topic. I read some really discouraging reports on how difficult the rooftop solar systems are to recycle, and the massive amounts of this toxic waste going into landfills in California and other US sunbelt states.
Solar panel degradation is a lot less in cooler and wetter climates like the UK than it is in hot dry climates like the Southwest US, Spain, Greece or the Middle East.
what about areas that get hail storms? How about some nice gollf balll sized hail shattering your solar panels.
and, what about tirnadoes and hurricanes? I wonder what happens to wind turbines in 100 mph winds.
I recently heard this issue brought up in a story on FauxNews. I assumed that it is an actual problem but I couldn't help but think that this is not really a solar panel problem (or "green energy" problem) - it is a waste management problem. There are so many other big problems with waste management in the US, from the lack of recycling in general, to people throwing fluorescent bulbs, small lithium batteries, and other electronic waste into the garbage.
recycling is a scam. Only thing worth recycling is aluminum cans. The reality is that all those things you put into the recycle at the end of day ends up in the landfill, same place as your garbage. In the past "recyclables" like plastic was sent to places like china and they just put it in a land fill or dump it in the ocean. There is no recycling of plastic. Only plastic that can be recycle is type 1 and type 2. But those don't get recycle for the same reason glass does not get recycle. It is just not cost effective and waste lots of energy. But since a few years ago china stop taking our garbage "recyclables" so they end up in landfills. So basically it ends up as garbage somewhere. It is better for us to have that control and be contain in landfills instead of exporting it to undeveloped countries cause that stuff ends up in the ocean.
Solar panels are not the only waste. Wind turbine blades are also waste too, that stuff is not recyclable either.
@@DaBinChe Wind turbine blades actually have a material recycling rate of 85-95% by weight.
@@planefan082 BS, most articles available say how they are not being recycled
@@The1stDukeDroklar You can't be serious. Other way around
@@planefan082 Quote from Bloomberg, a liberal news outlet: "Wind Turbine Blades Can’t Be Recycled, So They’re Piling Up in Landfills"
It's unbelievable how, when ressources are being wasted with reckless abandon (i.e. PVs in landfills, no proper recycling strategies for single use packaging, overuse of gas and oil when alternatives exist, etc) it almost always comes down to profits, and not the actual good one product or method does compared to another. I hope one day we'll be able to transition towards a system that is more in line with with our needs and wants, and not so much driven by the endless pursuit of profits.
@@l.baileyjean3719 Yes, buy less! Go back to the hunter-gatherer society, no homes, no air conditioning, no cars, no TV, no, no , no....anything to buy. In short, let's massively breed ourselves like rats until THAT IS THE FINAL OUTCOME!
@@l.baileyjean3719 We each have our share of responsibility, but I dont think individual action is the biggest culprit for our current predicament. The profit motive drives companies not only to fulfill demand, but to actually induce it themselves, too. That's why we are having to fight for our right to repair our own belongings, why the fashion industry is increasingly relying on shorter and shorter trend cycles, why we're made to feel inadequate without the latest smartphones even though the improvements are only getting more incremental and superfluous. Why we're sold this vapid suburban dream of great big lawns and 'car freedom', when really everybody hates having to commute to work during rush hour, having to take extensive care of a monoculture that is of virtually no use to them, feeling like they have to install a swimming pool in their backyard just so their kids can do 2 or 3 laps at the start of the summer and then get bored of it, having to drive everywhere and having your kids rely on you as a parent to go anywhere until they're old enough to drive themselves.
none of these 'individual desires' are actually something people really want or need, they're manufactured by industries that rely on them - and the overconsumption they induce - for profit.
and try as you may to reduce your individual impact or your carbon footprint, our lives are so interlinked with the choices of our govs and corporations, it is impossible to decouple ourselves from them as individuals enough to actually reach sustainable levels of CO2 emissions.
That system which caters to your "needs and wants" has already been invented. It's called communism, and the major tool to achieve its goals is to reduce your "needs and wants" to nothing. With the green prophets making decisions, we're well underway to reintroducing this wonderful system in the West, just don't complain when it's back in operation.
@@clray123 This only works if everyone contributes. The Russian Soviet Union proved beyond all doubts this doesn't happen.
@@glasslinger Yes, you need to use a lot of force and oppression to make all people "contribute" to such a system (and to reap off benefits for the few bosses who run it). Which is precisely what the current green ideology is aiming at.
The recycling/maintenance on those solar fields feels a lot like painting the Forth Bridge.
Responsible human beings have been talking about this from the very beginning. There is no free lunch nor "sustainable" energy. The recycling of wind turbines and PV cells is inherently dirty and very energy intensive. We'll be constructing wind and solar farms just to run the recycling facilities. "Solar capacity goals" are nothing but a pipe dream. It's been hot here in the central US, and Texas is facing rolling blackouts due to lack of wind and cloudy conditions and are telling customers to not charge their cars and turn up their AC systems to conserve electricity. This "hot" spell we experience here in the central US is nothing new. It's been hot here forever and will continue to be regardless of how many wind and solar farms are built.
Even to someone like me with little understanding of tech industry, it's obvious that solar panels have high potential for profitable recycling. Solar panels are not just a huge growing industry, but they are constructed with a lot of materials that are energy-intensive to manufacture or mine (with the basic constituents being finite resources), and they have a highly modularised form that means it's easier to access the materials from solar panels rather than from something like a laptop. Not recycling solar panels isn't just the usual irresponsible laziness/ignorance that has become standard in our society (unfortunately), it's missing a big opportunity.
Not just that, but by getting into recycling items like solar panels, it makes it easier for the industry to recycle many other similar items - like batteries - that will also be in high-demand in the years to come - all of which helps to pump more money into the recycling industry as a whole. I also wish our society would be responsible enough that monetary incentives weren't necessary, but I will honestly take whatever I can get.
dont worry about the expensive stuff - someone will look at it
worry about the cheap stuff - one that no one can make any money by recycling it. it would have to be subsidised or all this cheap stuff would end up in landfills eventually.
Already heard plenty of bosses of those recycling companies proudly announcing how good they are doing at recovering expensive stuff, conveniently omitting what is it they are doing with 95% of the cheap stuff that remains.
I read an article that said recycling is NOT popular right now because it costs 20- to 30 dollars to recycle a sokar panel and that it only produced about 8 to 12 dollars in reusable materials. And, that it took a special furnace for recycling. And that you had to be careful with them or they wouold shatter while trying to disassemble them. IF it was profitable, more companies WOULD be doing it.
@@MrBugman3009 Ah, you misunderstand. I said *potential* for recycling specifically because right now it is quite difficult - different companies are having success with different technologies but it’s still quite expensive. The problem is that the process has not been developed and mass-produced enough to come down in price (just like batteries and solar panels themselves when they were first introduced). However, solar panels and batteries have enough modular components of materials that are difficult to obtain/manufacture that once a recycling process is decided upon, those materials can be accessed and re-used in a mass-produced format. Because of their structure, these items are much easier to recycle than a laptop which is full of components of mixed materials, and the really precious materials are in tiny quantities. That was my point, I just didn’t want to make my post ridiculously long so I didn’t explain it fully.
On an aside, I would just like to point out that just because companies aren’t using an industrial process, it doesn’t mean that process couldn’t be cost-effective or very useful once a company has adopted it. The problem is that adopting any new industrial process requires huge changes and investment of money - there are types of recycling that falls into this category.
5:04 Those mass solar arrays like that made my stomach twist in knots. And this is just small stuff compared to whats coming :(
Take a moment to stop and think about the amount of heat that is retained locally (directly around the panels). Remember blue means that they are absorbing energy from the red/infra red end of the spectrum, whereas those red/orange white arid regions are responsible for some of the most significant net reflection of solar and heat energy back into the upper atmosphere and outer space. Those panels generally have an efficient of about 20%, so in other words 80% of the captured heat is being wasted to the air (environment) directly around those panels. Most will say, but yeah it's not significant.. But think about the proposed land coverage that is being proposed. People have an illusion that the polar regions are responsible for most of the heat reflection from our planet, but in truth these light coloured desert regions are on par with or may even exceed the net solar reflection of the polar regions. Just as a thought exercise: Would you feel comfortable painting significant portions of the arctic or ant-arctic black?
Everyone seams so hyped on the Green energy train that they get caught up in the small positive parts of the bigger picture and don't stop to think about the net impacts of all of this :(
This is not a criticism of the video creator. I am grateful that people do pay genuine interest into the topics surrounding this.
Finally some real scientific mind speaking the "inconvenient factor" which is conveniently left out in most solar panel related discussions.
Everything has an impact. Action and Reaction. But most people just accept the simple "truth" without questions. What's most concerning is the fervor whith which they then defend their "truth", the less they know they more fervent they become.
Some people still don't accept that Wind Farms kill birds. They won't accept secondary effects of Solar either.
Nonesence.
@@pengjin3476 I often get called a climate denier, or anti ecology etc, but the truth is I do care deeply about how we treat our planet. When I see one sided "subjective" arguments I immediately get alarm bells ringing in the back of my head, as it goes against my own scientific understanding of the pursuit of "objective" truths. When I look deeper I realize that studies are often piecemeal and leave out important considerations. Sometime I find alternative and genuine studies that go against an asserted outcome of another study and realize that much of the climate mitigation solutions are based upon partial and incomplete studies.
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It begins to feel more like religious "Faith" rather than genuine scientific pursuit.
I want to see real and workable solutions to problems in the world, but genuine solutions must be just that, "Genuine" and based on identifying "genuine" problem that needs to be solved. We must also pat careful consideration to the possibility that a solution can very easily create more or far worse problems that we intended to solve.
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DDT was a miracle solution to insect issues in farmlands and escalated food productivity to amazing heights relieving the burdens of food cost and raising many people out of poverty, yet quietly the same solution was killing the ecology and even returning via the food chain to reap havoc upon the very people the solution was meant to help.
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Another Analogy: My car has badly worn tires and I keep offering the solution of changing the tires on a regular basis, but on more in depth inspection I discover that the car has some serious but hidden mechanical failures that are causing the tires to wear prematurely. I have offered a genuine solution to a genuine problem, but actually missed the true underlying problem that needed to be solved.
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I admit that it is not easy, but we have to stop and think carefully, rationally and unemotionally. :)
@@nonyabisness6306 See my reply to @Peng Jin :)
Of course, once there's enough of them needing to be recycled, then there is enough economy of scale to actually invest in recycling them.
Materials for these panels are also going to go up, so that's also an incentive to recycle.
Life cycle on these things is actually pretty good. Most are given a 25 year warranty that guarantees at least 80% efficiency at that age.
My old and cheap solar hot water system was uneconomical to repair at 16 years old, but that's probably saved around 70,000 kwh heating water during that time frame, saving about 16 tons of co2. Even for normal household use that's a notable impact when you look at those numbers.
New, better quality one installed to replace it.
Solar PV and inverter still going on well despite being 9 years old. No callouts, no repairs, no faulty panels or inverters.
Replacing at 15 years is more about buying new stuff. Not buying new stuff you don't need is the best way to look after the planet.
Do not take hot showers 😜🙂 catch me outside...how 'bout that
when a new industry is in its formative operational stage, long term strategies relating to disposal and recycling must be an integral part of the process, such as incorporating the recycling process into the "facilities", in a manner of speaking such that the recycling process will be the beginning of the manufacturing process - not 2 separate and independent operations. When countries, like China, which have huge labor cost benefits see these advantages slip away with the standard of living increasing in their respective countries, this will help create a more competitive U.S. labor market and make manufacturing these panels in the U.S. more viable and with the recycling process already built in, the U.S. could have a jump on the materials side of the production process... Manufacturing in the U.S. should be the long term strategy as our labor force will be more competitive against the World markets...
Government needs to step in when it comes to recycling. The economic incentive just often isn't there, and even when it is, government needs to make sure not to disincentivize recycling with "environmental protection" regulations that do more harm than good.
Yeah because that worked out well for plastics once they reached commercial scale to be recycled.
A technology should never be called green unless there is a clean way to source the materials to make it and a clean way to dispose of it.
Many installations are upgrading from lower output panels to higher output panels, and rather than scrapping/recycling the panels, they are sold to companies who sell used panels. Sure the panels may have been in service 25 years and hit their 80% output, but gang enough of them together and a home owner can have inexpensive solar power. So the "End Of Life" problem is a thinking problem where most seem to assume that at 25 years/80% output automatically pushes them into landfill scrap but that is not the real world possibility. The replacements do to outright damage can be low too -- fork truck speared a couple of panels I received and they still show output -- sure I'll use them on my experimental system but even if 50% output they will add electrons.
30 years for lifetime of a solar panel may be very low. I have not heard of many panels fail, except for mechanical damage.
The average lifetime expectancy may soon be upgraded to 50 years or more. During that time efficiency may have increased and some might upgrade for more power on their limited space on their roof before end of life.
This is creating a second hand market that may get new customers into solar energy. The owner of new panels can see the second hand market as an economical boost for their upgrade to a higher power installation. The end of life for the inverters may be a trigger for the upgrade, as I believe the inverters will fail long before the panels.
It's not about total failure, they are mostly not competitive to never ones. They get micro cracks and the glass suffers from UV light. After 30 years of use, you can barely gift them to someone with low energy demands. Forget that second hand market. You should probably be happy not to have to pay for disposal fees.
EDIT: For those few who cannot be bothered with context, I will add some. This video is about some of the downsides of solar energy. There are a fair number of people I have met, let alone on the internet, who think that solar means free, absolutely clean energy, which is not the case. This video talks about part of the problem, which are the panels. My response to this video is to ask about a video covering the other side of the coin, as it were: The batteries required to make solar viable in most scenarios.
No, I don't care about talking on the topic of cars -- we've been talking about them for decades, and there are already myriad videos about it.
No, I don't care to talk about oil products -- we've been talking about that for decades, too.
No, I don't even care to talk about nuclear -- the most realistic option in many ways, and the one I am most supportive of, especially since I started ignoring the nonsense and fearmongering around the entire process. Just look at some of the majority-nuclear regions / nations who've designed their reactors well.
The topic at hand is solar. I want to hear about solar. If you can't understand that, I've got nothing that can help you.
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Haven't watched the whole thing yet...if you didn't address it here, can we also talk about the horrific impact making those batteries has on the environment, locals and wildlife anywhere near the mines and operations, etc? And their disposal issues?
while we're at it lets talk about the constant oil spills from big oil too, etc. Every energy sources has its downsides. Big oil has ensured global famines. Lets not make it any worse, aye?
@@0xsergy
Ok, while we're at it, how about windmills.
The concrete base alone when they start to weather give off CO2.
A two megawatt windmill is made up of 260 tonnes of steel that required 300 tonnes of iron ore and 170 tonnes of coking coal, all of it mined, transported and produced by hydrocarbons.
Then you have the potential problem that a windmill could spin (as long as its not to windy, they then shut down)until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in its construction.
Then you have the problem of disposal once their deemed useless which is actually from the beginning.
Not very green .
Solar panels shut down if it's too hot.
This whole green agenda is actually anything but when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it.
@@4faxache935 yes, all that sucks. If Big Oil took heed of scientists warnings in 1959 we'd have a lot more CO2 overhead to work with. As it sits we have less than 8 years to fix our energy situation..
FYI, windmills tend to pay off their carbon footprint in about 7 months so its not that bad given they last for 20 years...
@@0xsergy
Was that the same 1959 when the so called scientists were warning of an ice age????
@@0xsergy Less than 8 years! Our doom is upon us! I have been hearing the fear mongering for decades, now I'm deaf. Green power is a PC joke. And you are the punchline.
Even if the total efficiency of old solar panels falls 30-50% below their production optimum after 20-30 years of exposure to the sun and atmospheric elements. Surely REUSE before RECYCLE rule would be a very efficient way to make an extended life case for unwanted panels to be placed where their residual power can still be useful, by simply moving them to cheaper, sunnier, easily accessible locations with, minimal cost. Plus, dumping panels should be outlawed, with donations for reuse and then recycling for damaged ones mandated.
No, because the panels are already the smallest cost of installing solar PV. If you take used roof top panels and install these in an open field somewhere this is a very rough description of what you need to do:
Make a business case. Borrow money or attract investors. Get permit for your desired land use and lease land from the government. Apply for all possible subsidies; maybe try to get some money from solar panel manufacturers so they can show they are responsible and reuse old panels. Find the people who want their old panels taken for reuse instead of land filled; you can maybe even get some of them free. Hire people to check old panels and figure out which are usable and which are not; landfill some of them anyway. Flatten everything, remove the top soil, backfill to an even slope and grade it with gravel, put down ducts and cables, build the electrical connection to the site, add junction boxes and inverters to step up to voltage (even 48 V panels you wouldn't want to transmit over hundreds of meters; the cables would become prohibitively expensive; probably they go to AC and step it up to a few thousand volts, before stepping it up to even higher voltage at the site boundary). Figure out some universal mounting system for oddly sized panels and build it with a variety of row and column spacings corresponding the average composition of panels you expect to be able to get. Fence in the site. Build some receiving station where panels can be offloaded from a truck and tested before installation. Then there is maintenance, spraying with weed killer, cleaning the panels which needs water, which means you need to build a well or go somewhere nearby and get water by tanker truck.
Doing this isn't a trivial thing. Taking old panels looks more expensive than new panels even if they are free.
@@soylentgreenb Yep and do this for hundreds of acres of panels, generation after generation, and not to mention the batteries of some kind so people will have power for the 20 -15 hours in the day when the panels aren't making peak power. Solar with batteries is a good solution for a lot of people, but not all people, it will definitely take a good mix of carbon free energy sources, and a very robust and modern transmission system.
Another good point to raise would be, how likely are we to see a dip in the overall quality of SPVs across the board, which will certainly accelerate the issue?
You popped up on my UA-cam, glad you did!! I am 59, have a manufactured home. The providers in California do not include the NEEDED back up battery. I priced them around 10,000.00 USA dollars. I will never be able to afford battery. So, we said no. I did think about manufactured waste, but, you really opened my eyes. The batteries, oh crap, so much waste, the panels, good grief. Not sure any of this matters, Gaia is really trying to shake us off, like fleas...I believe we are way past tipping point, and very glad I chose not to have children.
The next generation will not save us...they are being destroyed by cartel drugs. Homeless in USA, hundreds of thousands created recently, covid, and landlords.
I used to work for a manufacturer of plastic. Those machines, the waste, we pulled parts that were on frames, the frame was waste you cut parts off. They closed in 2008. Jeannie
J
Unbelievable how nasty Lithium mining and recycling solar panels can be, yet it is still sold as "green".
What alternative do you suggest?
did YOU vote for one of those Liars??
I wholeheartedly believe that solar panels have a long future supplying homes and warehouses with green clean electricity, but the vastness of the solar farms that you highlighted for such limited and small amounts of power absolutely baffles me that people are taking large scale farms seriously. It's just not scalable. I believe the sun is the future of clean, reliable and sustainable energy but it's the reaction that creates the light that solar panels use rather than the light that's by product.
I personally champion commercial solar for this exact reason.
Why cover a field that could be farm, natural or wetland when we have nearly 1/3 of the acreage of any given city as commercial warehouse, light industry, shopping malls and parking lots.
Generate the electricity near the load, reduce the grid scaling required, improve redundancy, reduce transmission loss.
Of course the answer why this is not happening and why there is so much obstruction to it is because the current grids are privatized monopolies that do not want to socialize the generation revenue they are enjoying.
The grid monopoly needs to allow a large number of small end user producers to make this happen and they don't want to because they are friends with the big grid generators who want ROI on their massive coal and gas plants. Or investors who want ROI on massive field covering wind and solar projects.
They are OK to have a few hippy weirdos doing a tiny bit of generation and pretend they support "end user green generation". But if some huge industrial and warehouse facility covers their acres of roof and parking lot with solar it will really bite into private generation company revenues.
So what needs to happen is massive cross discipline, cross industry cooperation along with local government support to make it happen. Some business needs to allow the private generation company to install panels on their land instead of some field. Find some way of fairly compensating the land owner company and the tenant company and the solar generation company, while also complying with the need of the grid company, while also having support and fair regulations from local government. Which is all way too much work and coordination and cooperation to happen realistically.
The other alternative is if there are places that already have socialized grid and generation, all we need is a few key points in the chain to give up a bit of political power to allow endpoint generation to happen at scale. But there are very few places in the world where this could be a reality as well.
So we are stuck with our $$$ revenue driven grids which need to transmit power from outside the city into the city to exist. So they do not support large scale endpoint generation, banning it with regulations or just not supporting it with reasonable connectivity, or outing limits on it to prevent financial viability. All so their friends can do large rural generation projects with predictable ROI to transmit over the for profit grid to the urban user base. And kick a few $$$ over to local politicians to ensure this privatized monopoly obstructs any progress to a better system.
@@5353Jumper that's a lot to unpack there lol I'm guessing you're in the US from your reply and have to say we have it a little bit different in the UK. A lot of our new build housing is already fitted with solar and the UK government has rolled out a lot of schemes to subsidize the cost of having solar fitted to homes and warehouses etc. We can also sell back our unused energy to the national grid which helps keep the break even times down from the date of installation. However it's still expensive and as with most things green and renewable it keeps it out of reach for most.
I totally understand how on both sides of the pond monopolies take the piss out of the end user for profit but the massive rise in energy prices we are having in UK and across Europe is directly attributable to successive governments listening to the loudest shouters for wind, solar and net zero targets which in reality simply don't work. Wind, solar and EV's have proven themselves to be expensive, unreliable and really quite a lot more damaging to the environment then we have been led to believe, tie that into exporting oil and gas production to Russia (in Europe) and sacrificing our own supplies to achieve net zero and we now arrive at the mess we are in right now.
French have 56 nuclear plants and the cheapest electricity in Europe, we buy it off them to prop up the always reliably unreliable onshore, off shore wind and solar farms.
If the west had spent as long and as much building nuclear plants rather than wind and solar farms we could have all been living in a home powered and warmed entirely by electricity and it would be cheap and plentiful.
@@martinroberts4391 you said it "National Grid". That is something that a few countries in Europe have but are extremely rare around the world. Most places either have a for profit grid or a corrupted national grid which is beholden to the for profit grid scale generation. This is the main factor holding back anything but token adoption of endpoint generation and storage solutions - except for the few European countries where rooftop solar is flourishing.
Again it goes back to the basic fact that the reason NW Europe is flourishing right now is the highly functional democracies that allow things like the national grids to actually make decisions with some logic instead of pure greed of a few individuals. Appreciate what you have. Good luck in UK as it seems yours is starting to slip a bit.
The rest of the world just needs to make due with applying pressure to our large grid scale monopolies and trying to entice them to do the right thing by making it cheaper to do, yet paying more for it, so they justify environmentalism with profiteering.
So it is not really that European people adopt endpoint solar and the rest of us resist it or does not understand the benefits. It is that European people have grids and politicians that allow it while the rest of the world doesn't.
Same goes for Nuclear generation which I am also a fan of. But kinda opposite. Until recently nuclear plants were massive meaning larger investment, more risk and longer wait for ROI. So basically they require government to make them happen and private enterprise avoids them. The only reason a few big plants ever existed in the US was their side benefit in weapons development. Now small plant designs are available, but there is still lots of obstruction from the fossil fuel industry as they need to get their ROI back on the existing gas plants before they consider new designs.
Also side note: many of the massive solar projects around the world particularly US, Canada, Australia are not really plugged into the grid for household distribution. Most of them are actually powering petroleum industry projects so the petroleum industry can try to claim "net zero" on all the polluting products they produce. Basically a massive greenwashing scam. With the side benefit for oil companies that they steal investment, materials and skilled workers from what would be actual grid scale green generation projects that would actually reduce burning of fossil fuels.
They are "Replace-ables", not "Renewables". In no way is this "Sustainable" energy. I love solar, but the PV system has incredible flaws and causes for a massive amount of environmental damage. This needs to change.
Well, renewable aims at the energy sources and those are in fact renewable compared to the ending sources of fossile fuels.
You had to compare solar panels with oil derricks/rigs etc.
Oil rigs as example are simply sunk at the end of their lifetime.
Nice video, u got urself a subscriber. I was just simply buffled about the huge cost of solar pv recycling company would reach.
I recently bought 20 off 235W solar panels at £25 each and built a shed from them. They were cheaper than 18mm thick marine ply.
PS they ware second hand of course, 8 years old, and they still work too!
Solar PV panels last 25years to an efficiency of 80%, and then keep making electricity for another 25years and maybe years longer.
Electronics are incredibly reliable and central power companies see them as a real danger to their business model.
Every building is connected to the grid.
Every building has a roof.
Every building will have an EV plugged in.
Dispersed power supply is the biggest danger to central power supply businesses.
JUST HAVE A THINK 🤔
I'd be interested to know what the growth rate of different renewable sectors is! If we need multiple terrawatts of solar it would be interesting to know what the current global production capacity is. At the end you mentioned 53GWs of new solar in China in 2021 which is half a percent of a terrwatt so getting that much energy sounds super daunting.
Great video as always! It's always wild to hear just how much more forward thinking the EU is capable of legislating
You can get that on wikipedia, the growth of the installed capacity has been exponential over the last three decades, with one order of magnitude gained in 10 years. As things are, solar produce about 800 TWh, the world consumes 24,000 TWh (in electricity alone), assuming the trend will continue for 20 years or so those estimate look ok. The issue is that it is hard to predict when the tech will hit a bottleneck and stall, and that the energy needs are also growing at a pretty fast pace, and the electrification of transports will not help.
Could battery recycling plants be used to reclaim useful materials from solar panels? They don't have much to do at the moment so a dual purpose would make sense possibly adapting machinery they already have where possible. China and India could just give old panels to rural communities who live off grid instead of grinding up a 50%+ power producing panel.
These companies could go for the dual approach, but they'd need different process lines for it, so they shouldn't onl do it if they have cash to burn and want to do something similar to what they already do (but not the same). At this moment there already are dedicated recycling plants for PV in the EU, so it might not be that interesting here unles you do something like a merger.
There are about 20 grams (2/3rds of an ounce) of Silver in an Average Solar Panel. It doesn't make any sense why Solar Panels are not being recycled now and are being dumped into landfills.
The simple solution to the cost of recycling is to add that cost to the point of purchase and then use that revenue to immediately start recycling end of life panels.
The question is always , what is the more environmentally friendly alternative ? What other technology has a service life of around 30 years with comparably low maintenance? What other technology is without waste that cannot be recycled?
Geothermal is the answer to the world's energy problem. We simply need to R&D the tech to drill deeper so they can be used anywhere in the world. Inexhaustible, generates no waste, 100% clean energy, can be used to purify water, small real estate footprint, and operates 24/7.
Natural gas.
@@dadoogie natural gas is already used for power production but it emits carbon which doesn't address the co2 problem.
There is no other option without waste. This is why the most efficient lowest waste option must be identified. And the identification is easy, nuclear power generates a fraction of the waste as any other source of energy and has the added benefit of just going away over time.
@@The1stDukeDroklar It creates far less than coal which is what a lot of people are moving back to, we've regressed when Natural gas is an evil we can have right no without the huge impact. The poster who said Nuclear is bang on the money and is the purest alternative.
I think we need to look at the end of life cycles on everything we create, solar panels being no exception. Regardless of their motivations, I'll celebrate the tiny win on more people at least giving this serious thought and potential action now. It takes a village.
As naive as the wish may be, I'll also add that I would love to see humanity collectively do something simply because it's the right thing to do. Our obsession with one of our other creations (money) is slowly crushing us under the weight we've given it.
It's not that this is naïve it's just vague. What do you think everyone should do? Recycle? We already do that as much as the products available to us allow us.
@@matthewtalbot-paine7977 We can do those things, but I was speaking more from a higher level of prioritization. As he astutely pointed out, the usual draw for attention to a problem is the ability to make or save money by addressing it. In the order of prioritization, the money doesn't matter in the absence of a habitable planet to spend it on (form follows function).
So, my thoughts were around humanity getting stuck on a rung of the ladder instead of going from the top (long term survival of the species) and working our way down.
we finnally found the first communist that dont use money or maybe its just this kind of people that spit in the soup they coocked for their childs
Like having fewer children thus stopping the population explosion that is the root cause of all these problems in the first place! FAT CHANCE! We are doomed!
@@glasslinger yes for sure if their is no people their is no problem tought despit over population bring ever bad event the underpopulation not allow tecnologicaL advance and probleme reduction just because lack of manpower for basic task as historical exemple all empire who managed a growth of population solved it by expending teritorys
This is why I think we should focuss even more on reducing energy usage and waste in general. No matter how you create (or convert, if you want to be scientific lyrics accurate) energy, more energy means more resources, more money, more recycling ecs.
Promoting good insulation, lower car dependence, general energy waste reducing acts like unplugging devices when you don't use them and even more specific actions against crypto and the obsession with graphics in gaming will all heavily reduce the burden on projects like this.
Your scarcity mindset is why I think most environmentalists are eugenecists. How about being pro human and pro abundance. Kurt covain yourself first, stop trying to make life a useless medieval slog.
I would rephrase that as more efficient use of energy. Saying reduce makes it sound like asking people to reduce their quality of living which is not something people will accept. We need to make what we already have more efficient.
@ 2:08. I don’t recall where I heard this before but it fits this part perfectly. “Everyone wants to save the world…..as long as it’s cost effective.”
4:30 one modern nuclear power plant produces more megawatt and just needs 10 % of the area.
It would maybe make economic sense for the huge solar farms to have their own recycling and manufacturing on site. If the transportation costs in both the recycling and manufacturing is almost nil due to proximity, it becomes a more viable option.
have you considered the size of the building to produce and recycle solar panels on site? Not to mention that they would NOT be making or recyling panels every day. And, they would need to ship the raw materials and hazardoous waste created in the manufacture f solar panels. That's as dumb as saying car makers should have a factory in every city instead of shipping cars around the country. It costs millions of dollars to buid a factory. And, you would need different machines to build the panels and different machines to recycle them. The factory would be HUGE.
@@MrBugman3009 How big are the factories that are making the panels now? It is not like car companies. Cars are used by everyday people not the company itself. Aren't the panel manufacturers and recyclers already shipping the materials both to and from plants? Why wouldn't they be making and recycling everyday? If production was set to produce 1/10th of the array every year than theoretically they could replace the entire system every ten years. It was just a thought on my part. As I originally commented, it is a "maybe".
too much bureaucracy for it to be efficient. Government incentives are just going to exacerbate this.
@@newguy3588 Wow are you a defeatist. How much bureaucracy takes place within a company? How did Elon Musk make billions when you say it's impossible?
@@t.a.ackerman4098 I wasn't talking about a company. I was talking about the government.
While this is a long term concern, it is probably the finances of the fossil fuel industry that is making short term storage of glass waste a political issue, or an impediment to deployment.
Would love for you to touch up on the exponential increase of perovskite solar panels rather than the conventional silicon solar panels. The toxic metals that will be let into the atmosphere if those solar panels are not correctly disposed of may be a great issue. If anyone has any more info on this would love to hear your thoughts and ideas of low cost methods that can be used to correctly dispose of those perovskite panels in 3rd world countries.
Yeah perovskite panels sound great, but the fact they're made with lead and/or cadmium not so much. I thought we'd moved on from that short-sighted thinking after leaded gas or nickel-cadmium batteries, but i guess not...
"Green Energy" is a scam
@natma relnam True, but China is also the superpower taking deforestation more seriously. Weird people huh?
Lead acid batteries are the most recycled product in North America. Because 40+ years ago the industry and government worked together for both the environment and keeping the supply chain available.
The problem is who / where are the pv modules being built, and where is the incentive to recycle?
Right now in NA, most recyclers are just grabbing the frames. But the other minerals in there need to be reclaimed as well.
You mean to tell me renewables aren't as renewable a everyone thought? Inconceivable!!!!
my dads setup is still going strong after 20 years in the uk... output is still on form. solar hot water too. energy bills are near zero. happy days.
Hopefully the efficiency of solar panels goes up as well! This is a move in the right direction, for sure.
@Eric C Thanks for the technical information. I know that efficiency and storage are issues we need to keep addressing with solar, wind and other technologies. I am very pro green technology, but I am also a realist. Yes, I do have a technical background, so I understand the issues fairly well. My personal opinion is keep the research going, and explore many different solutions. I think that future energy will be supplied by many different means (solar, wind, nuclear, fuel cells, etc.) Just what the mix should be, I don't know. But we should keep working at. Thanks, Eric.
@Eric C Yeah, 33% from the most sunny place on Earth, solar becomes way more efficient free of Earth's atmosphere closer to the Sun. Some companies want to beam solar energy from space down to Earth, pretty cool.
Hopefully battery prices come down enough that normal people can afford them. Off grid solar is nearly impossible for 98% of the population.
@Eric C The assumption there is that he is talking about the power per volume efficiency i.e. how much power you can get from a solar panel of a given size but there are other efficiencies to be made weight, materials, production costs. What we all really want is the cost of solar panels in whatever form they might take to go down per for the lifetime power they provide.
@@baneverything5580 Why is it impossible? Certainly not the battery price. A 5kwh battery that I just searched for was £4k which is about the cost of the solar system itself to work with such a battery. I mean maybe 98% can't afford £8k but then they probably can't afford £4k either if they are in that situation.
Thank you for addressing this. Would also be good to weigh how toxic the whole mining, transporting, making of, disposal of solar panels (and wind turbines) - especially as more and more people are encouraged to have panels & turbines - is it really doing good for the environment or is it just a cost saving thing so we can feel less guilty about our consumption?
+1. I think you know the answer to that one, M R.
Doesn't really matter what regular folks do, we could keep our panels until they're 0% effective and it still won't tip the scales of global warming
Would love to see your take on Plasma Gasification as a transitional power solution. Given that recycling is being accomplished at such a low rate could it be more efficient to gasify these wastes and focus on reducing waste inputs like eliminating single use plastics in favor of glass or bio-based materials.
Solar panels, lithium batteries, 2000LB EV batteries, old windmill blades - The more you look into "GREEN" oil & coal looks damn clean.
So, do the panels produce enough electricity to power the mining, refining, production, freight, installation, replacement, collection, recovery and back to production?
Ironically, cheap, carbon free energy from molten salt thorium breeder reactors could make the recycling of materials much more cost effective. But it would simultaneously eliminate the need for massive solar farms.
Great, build one and then we can talk about replacing the solar panels.
I think PV tech is the best alternative behind nuclear for energy production. Most panels promise >80% effi after 25 years. What people don't understand, is they don't blow up after that. If that loss in effi is important to you, you add 1 new panel to your 25yo installation to offset loss, and continue using it. You throw away NOTHING. It is only up to you whether you want to use ALL OF THEM even to a point of say 20% effi. In industrial it is different since installations are much bigger a d installing offset panels might not be an option. But not selling 80% effi panels second hand would be retarded. Są which panels are landing on landfill at the moment? Cause I don't see why any should.
I hope he's right, but given the massive problems with recycling of even basic materials like glass and plastic, I'll believe it when I see it
Most of our green energy is just digging us deeper into the climate change, unfortunately. I agree with you… I’ll believe it when I see it.
I don’t think glass is a problem at all … it’s basically all plastic that’s the problem
Glass is arguably the easiest material to recycle, you just melt it and reform. Over here most (intact) glassware is sent to recycling centers where its cleaned and re-used.
Plastic however is not.
My neighbor warned me about this a long time ago. I have no solar on the house (for now).
The same issue comes with the wind mills. Most of the materials are not recyclable.
The electric batteries for our cars with the lithium is another dangerous issue. What to do with those batteries when they deplete their ability. What about the mining of Lithium and its environmental impact. Or its impact on human and wildlife due to it's poisonous composition?
There are other ways to reduce out carbon foot print. I'm presently building a solar hot air system with panels to heat the home during the day time. I already use a wood burning stove for evening and night time. We have a heat pump but it uses so much electricity to run.
An example of what I discovered last century. "There is no clean green free anything. There are only different shades of dirty brown".
What happened to Solar Thermal electricity? Not for rooftop on houses but for massive plants like you talk about, a parabolic troth reflecting heat onto a pipe of liquid seems a lot more sensible. Heat in tanks looses only 1% of its energy overnight so, that's your battery. and 80% energy from the sun is heat only 20% the right photons for PV. Blind Freddy can see a 50% efficiency solar thermal beats a 90% PV, there is more energy to grab. Also reflectors can be made of a single metal low tech and easy to recycle. What went wrong ???
It honestly blows my mind that landfills are still growing. I grew up next to a plant that burns garbage and sells the heat to nearby homes. This obviously relies on people having a convenient option to get rid of recyclables and stuff that falls outside of those groups like garden hose.
Great contribution! Thank you very much!
While in Japan, a company devised equipment to strip the panel aluminium off, then heat and scrape off the backing, silver and cells. The glass is reusable for new panels.
I've been in the solar industry for 5 years. My boss has been doing it for about 12 years. And we have in storage every broken or replaced module we've ever took down. My bosses logic is letting it go to the dump is backwards logic to what we do professionally. He saw the future of recycled panels and we are sitting on our old and broken ones. Granted, nowhere near the numbers explained here, but the forward thinking at the core topic
That’s great. At some point they could be re used when technology gets better.
I wish governments would grant something like a storage grant, so such companies wouldn't have to pay tax on storage space used for storing PV panels. I think it might incentivize a lot more companies to do that rather than throwing them all away
Profit = waste, in effect, because the life cycle cost stops at the point of sale to the ‘consumer’. In reality nothing has been consumed yet the ‘consumer’ pays for disposal. All unconsumed waste needs sending back to the manufacturer to deal with because they have the infrastructure to process it.
Solar panels, also known as photovoltaic or PV panels, are made to last more than 25 years. In fact, many solar panels installed as early as the 1980s are still working at expected capacity today. Also reuse of components from panels is over 50%, just remember to send the damaged panel to an electric waste recycling center.
Surely they can find room to stack them next to the wind generator blades that fill boneyard all over the world.
Let's put all the cards on the table.
LET'S JUST HAVE A THINK.
We have a puzzle with many parts and everyone is getting lost in the weeds
No CO2 in the world, yes ?
EV, electrical vehicles every where.
Electrical every thing. Yes?
Dispersed power supply or
Central power supply
An example, say AUSTRALIA, it is easiest set of facts. For DISPERSED power supply.
25million people
20million buildings connected to EXISTING grid
20million vehicles
25Gw installed fossil fueled power plants, 600Gwh daily.
30kwh daily capacity max. per building.
EXITING power grid from far North Queensland to Perth 7,000klm
6.6kw rooftop solar PV system,
33kwh daily capacity per rooftop
100kwh battery in each vehicle, EV vehicles.
Daily drive, or rush hour 7wkh, tiny.
With every EV connected to grid 24/7/365.
The automatic 'plug in' gizmo will be the killer invention for the EV.
The EV battery will trade power and stability with the grid for money and profit.
The big money and profit will be in the EXISTING grid.
THE CENTRAL POWER SUPPLY.
Nuclear, no CO2.
EV, electrical vehicles and everything.
Demand ×3 to ×5 fold increase.
25Gw is 80 SMR nuclear power reactors
×3 is 243 SMR
×5 is 415 SMR for Australia
Decades and decades to build
$1billion each. 415 plus, for future growth.
Decades and decades to make a profit
Government Garrentees forever.
7,000klm grid capacity to expand ×3 to ×5 fold.
$BILLIONS AND BILLIONS.
Poles and wires to the streets and homes and businesses capacity to expand ×3 to ×5 fold.
$BILLIONS
Decades to build out
Government Garrentees profits.
Monopoly control and profits.
Monopoly political donations.
Now let's look at the WORLD
NUCLEAR power industries in every country on the planet.
70%of the world's population is in dictatorships.
Mr Putin said he would use Nuclear weapons if any one tries to stop him from killing his neighbour's children.
Mr Putin would effectively kill his own country's children when the nuclear retaliation, because of his use of nuclear weapons
The USA is the biggest target in the world.
The Military defence costs increase massively, ballistically. $BILLIONS and billions.
150,000 SMR power reactors around the world.
DECADES AND DECADES AND DECADES to build.
$BILLIONS AND BILLIONS AND
Trained nuclear builders and
Trained nuclear operators, 3 shifts, 24/7/365 for 150,000 nuclear power plants. 9billion people.
The world's best have failed.
All so expensive that you are locked in for decades, 60years to 100years.
Monopoly profits to the power supply corporations, massive profits.........
There are a few more cards to play, but you see the matters that are NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT.
Solar is dispersed and the ends of the grid are dispersed.
A building at the ends of every grid.
Profitability is sustainability.