[HN Gopher] Solar panel waste may not be nearly as bad as we onc...
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Solar panel waste may not be nearly as bad as we once thought
Author : JSeymourATL
Score : 98 points
Date : 2022-11-13 16:48 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fastcompany.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fastcompany.com)
| roughly wrote:
| Interesting - assuming the panels last twice as long also drops
| the per-watt price pretty dramatically, which changes the
| economics on solar panels pretty favorably.
| Freestyler_3 wrote:
| Panels come with 20/25 year warranty that after that period
| they have declined a maximum of 20% in performance.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Recycling solar panels is tough because glass fines are created,
| often inseparable from items that adhere to them. Those fines
| don't currently have secondary demand and they're a health and
| possibly environmental hazard. The CAPEX for recycling panels is
| high because size reduction and separation requires expensive
| (and expensive to maintain) equipment. I expect companies like
| American Battery Recycling, et. al., to tackle this waste stream
| on as a natural adjunct to their battery recycling
| operations/systems. I'm not as optimistic that the waste won't be
| as bad as once thought because I envision the price of new panels
| to continue to fall, while efficiency increases. Could be a
| secondary market emerges for the old panels, but I'm skeptical.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I've seen at least half a dozen cases where off-grid people
| tried to buy a container load of used solar panels which, for
| one reason or another, in the end never appeared. I believe the
| demand for used solar panels is higher than the supply.
| recycledmatt wrote:
| They can recover the aluminum fraction with an Eddy Current.
| The panel becomes Adc or land fill
| ummonk wrote:
| Price falling, sure, but I don't see how efficiency rising
| would lead to more solar panel waste down the road.
| kragen wrote:
| jevons paradox
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Al, Si and trace amounts of silver have no health or
| environmental hazard, and the silver is the valuable bit.
| Please stop gas lighting based on obsolete technology that was
| only briefly popular in one country.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Inhaling solid $anything dust is a health and environment
| hazard.
|
| Si dust probably isn't asbestos bad, but wouldn't want to
| breathe it in either.
| recycledmatt wrote:
| These will go into auto shredders (for the most part) which
| have dust management plants
| recycledmatt wrote:
| If you're trying to recycle 100%, this is an expensive and hard
| to handle stream. If you're cool pulling the aluminum and
| Alternative Daily Cover / landfill the rest, it's not that bad
| and the infrastructure can handle it / exists.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's a story similar to nuclear power, where people found it
| wasn't that hard to extend the life of nuclear reactors a lot
| longer than originally planned.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > where people found it wasn't that hard to extend the life of
| nuclear reactors a lot longer than originally planned.
|
| France is showing right at this moment just how bad an idea
| that is. Over half their reactors are _still_ down, most
| because of issues with cracks in pipes.
| delecti wrote:
| That's less an inherent problem with extending the reactors'
| lifespans, and more a problem with all of the reactors being
| old. They built a bunch of reactors, and then stopped, so now
| they're all on the same maintenance schedule. If instead they
| had kept building over time, then they'd have a bunch of new
| ones, and advance warning to tackle problems those reactors
| might face _eventually_.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Histogramme_des_%C3%A2ges.
| ..
| api wrote:
| One should expect monstrous amounts of FUD about anything that
| replaces fossil fuels.
| googlryas wrote:
| Honestly, at this point in our hyperpartisan world, I expect
| monsterous FUD about pretty much anything. There was just a
| small scale war in my city about a proposal to slightly
| modify the way our library is funded. If that gets people
| riled up, then one can only imagine what multi trillion
| dollar industries can stir up.
| lob_it wrote:
| Its more of a generational divide with the hyperpartisan
| gibberish. I always laughed when they said "voting for the
| lessor of two brain-dead illiterates stuck in the 18th
| century".
|
| It looks like the indoctrinated offspring from that rabid
| environment just make a 3rd and 4th party easier to
| implement... To square up the 3 sides to every story and
| the fourth to make it interesting (FORE is a cool number in
| golf too).
|
| A ho-nest days pay for a ho-nest days work is loaded with
| innuendos :)
|
| And regarding renewables, diversification is a beautiful
| thing in the 1st world :)
| thechao wrote:
| That's probably just a yellow bike shed, though?
| p1necone wrote:
| Actually I think we should paint it green.
| lazide wrote:
| Near as I can tell, a lot of people are just mad.
|
| Not about anything in particular, just mad.
|
| So really it doesn't matter, they'll pick a fight over
| anything.
| chadcmulligan wrote:
| As an older fairly conservative friend of mine said when
| I was trying to talk him into some new tech thing - I
| just don't want anything to change. Seems a lot of people
| are like that, and just knee jerk to any change.
| lazide wrote:
| Yup. IMO, it's a sign of being overwhelmed.
|
| When folks get older, a lot of things stop working as
| well as they did, including old learned behaviors and
| physical things too, so it happens more easily and more
| often.
|
| But this isn't just an old person thing right now.
| prawn wrote:
| I've long figured that a lot of political tensions stem
| from the perceived pace of change: in technology, social
| norms, etc. It must be hard going from feeling like the
| master of your domain to frustrated that you don't know
| how to watch streaming TV or might put your foot in it
| saying something that was unremarkable 20 years ago
| (e.g., joke books in the 80s were _full_ of stereotypes).
| reilly3000 wrote:
| Public Relations won. Advertising won. Weaponized
| Infighting is winning.
|
| Say the first thing that comes to mind when you think "Coca
| Cola." Say it out loud, don't edit.
|
| If you said something about nostalgia or polar bears you
| would be like most humans around the globe for the past 50+
| years. I submit that as my evidence that PR and Advertising
| are remarkably potent.
|
| If you really said something to the effect of "depraved
| multinational corporation" you've eluded their attempts to
| seer their brand onto your brain 50 times a day. You have
| steel wit, perhaps your neurophysiology measures a few SD
| from norms. You have an important role in the solution.
|
| Advertising & PR ought to be illegal, especially with AI
| driving it. I came from that space and love the creativity,
| but fear it's power. Usually where advertising is illegal
| it just means the state has a monopoly on marketing. It's
| not an enforceable policy, and is a meaningful degradation
| of liberty.
|
| What I think would work is making it unprofitable. Revoke
| the tax deduction for it. Then make some licensure and
| oversight for influence operations (my new umbrella term).
| Register professional services agreements and require
| quarterly reports. Target ad exchanges like crypto, with a
| set of standards and Treasury authority.
|
| Frankly, online ad exchanges have been one of the highest
| volume means of international money laundering and global
| exchange, and Google et al skimming huge % cuts of 2-5
| parts of the transaction. Not regulating it will allow a
| loophole for continued fraudulent transactions at scale.
|
| Parcels of human "mindshare" are auctioned off with every
| advertising transaction. Your 5 seconds on YouTube can be
| worth $5 to the right advertiser. Often that means the
| highest profit, most coercive players win your attention
| the most. On web publisher sites, the auction happens in
| 100ms often in the client at the expense of performance.
| Always. You can't fire off 700 requests and not impact
| performance. It's for bids to a dozen ad networks and all
| of their trackers and the winning ad's trackers and then
| then do it again every 30 seconds and on scroll listeners,
| for 6-12 ads plus a video player or two and an exit pop.
|
| Is it just cool that human attention is auctioned off like
| chattel slavery? Am I wrong to be scared of what
| billionaires can and have been doing with free reign?
|
| _Citizens United_ really did a number on democracy. Such an
| ironic name, isn't it?
| macspoofing wrote:
| Solar does not replace fossil fuels.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It replaces some of them but not all of them.
|
| A cynical take on Amory Lovins' "Soft Energy Path" was that
| it talked about wind and solar but really delivered gas
| turbines fueled by methane because 1 that was the real
| "least cost energy" and 2 it could easily fill the gaps in
| intermittent renewables.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| On HN I find it precisely the opposite - if you point out
| flaws with solar, electric cars, wind, self driving cars,
| etc. you take a lot of downvotes
| acdha wrote:
| Extending from ajuc's spot-on answer, a lot of those
| downvotes also come from how this works:
|
| 1. Fossil fuel companies are desperate to prolong
| profitability and avoid legal penalties. They fund
| unqualified people (e.g. Stephen Milloy) to come up with
| ways to claim the science isn't settled or to attack the
| motives of environmentalists. "These people aren't as green
| as they should be" is a popular approach since humans love
| to roast hypocrites.
|
| 2. Those people are basically constantly A/B testing random
| brain-farts to see which ones get some traction.
|
| 3. The ideas which work well early on start moving from the
| promoter's personal Twitter/Facebook/blog to Reason.com or
| Watts Up With That and, if successful, move up to Fox News
| or The Wall Street Journal.
|
| By numbers, most people hear about this in the latter
| stages of step 3. That means that when someone gets all
| fired up about the hot scientific news they got from Tucker
| and starts repeating it, anyone who cares about the subject
| has not only heard about it before but has seen it debunked
| repeatedly, too. That tends to get instant downvotes, just
| as people do not read spam.
|
| You can see a contrast here: when someone posts something
| original and shows that they've done some homework, they
| get plenty of engagement.
| epistasis wrote:
| It's really hard to find downsides to these that are not
| just pure FUD. They really are better than the alternatives
| in all ways.
|
| We will look back at the days of gas powered engines like
| we do at steam powered locomotives.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| Sounds exactly the same as what parent is warning about to
| me
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Only when the "flaws" are in the form of "lol what do you
| think your electric car is charged with?! (mic drop)".
| googlryas wrote:
| It may also be because those flaws are trite comments with
| clear answers that just get repeated in a meme-like
| fashion. I cannot tell you how many people I say that are
| worried about ranging anxiety, for example, but go on maybe
| one long trip per year.
| ajuc wrote:
| One of the reasons is that a lot of these downsides are
| overplayed, based on long-obsolete data or false
| altogether.
|
| For some examples:
|
| - electric cars are still burning fossil fuels cause
| powerplants burn fossil fuels (yeah, but electric cars go
| ~2 times further on 1 liter of fuel even if all our power
| came from fossil fuels which it doesn't)
|
| - rare earth minerals are limited which means we can't have
| everybody drive electric cars (rare earth minerals aren't
| THAT rare, for example lithium is more common than lead on
| Earth, the current availability is a function of past
| investment which is based on past demand - when demand
| grows quickly the infrastructure lags and you get temporary
| price hikes, also there are alternatives)
|
| - batteries/solar cells can't be recycled (they can,
| there's just not enough demand right now because we're at
| the exponential growth phase so the used batteries/solar
| panels are very small percentage of the currently-in-use
| batteries/solar panels)
|
| - you cannot have 100% renewable power grid because
| unpredictable production (you can, some countries do - for
| example Costarica and many countries are very close - for
| example Portugal and Norway - but it creates different
| problems than the traditional powerplants - but there are
| ways to solve this which are getting ever more economically
| viable - citing data from 10 years ago is about as sensible
| as citing CPU transitor counts from 1990s when talking
| about designing a new graphic card)
| derriz wrote:
| 100% isn't the goal.. yet. Nor is it practical for many
| countries. But, getting to 70-80% renewables with current
| technology is feasible and economic for nearly all
| countries. The balance to be provided by modern (natural)
| gas turbine generation.
|
| There's no need to slow down getting to 70-80% renewables
| because we're unsure how to cover the last 20%. The
| latter is a problem for future decades.
| tpxl wrote:
| > lithium is more common than lead on Earth
|
| Lithium isn't a rare earth mineral.
| hwillis wrote:
| I'll note that neodymium is, and is used in very small
| amounts (much less even than lithium) in most EV electric
| motors (specifically, the reluctance types that are
| currently most popular). It's not essential, but it does
| increase range by a few percent.
|
| Neodymium is also one of the most abundant REEs- there
| are basically two groups of REEs, some of which are rare
| and some of which are >10x more abundant. Neodymium is in
| the latter. It's also not that supply is restricted (eg,
| how it all comes from china)- the _demand_ is so low that
| the cost means it is not mined even where it is easy to
| harvest. There are large mines in the US and elsewhere
| that are shut down because China just does it cheaper.
| ajuc wrote:
| It was about cobalt before, now that batteries switched
| to LFP without cobalt the naysayers switched to
| complaining about lack of lithium :)
| Galaxeblaffer wrote:
| >- you cannot have 100% renewable power grid because
| unpredictable production (you can, some countries do -
| for example Costarica and many countries are very close -
| for example Portugal and Norway - but it creates
| different problems than the traditional powerplants - but
| there are ways to solve this which are getting ever more
| economically viable - citing data from 10 years ago is
| about as sensible as citing CPU transitor counts from
| 1990s when talking about designing a new graphic card)
|
| this one is very questionable though and only very
| specific countries with the right geography can cheaply
| attain 100% electricity from renewables. Two of the
| countries you mention are very fortunate to have almost
| endless possibilities for hydro and Portugal still at 50%
| gas/coal ?
|
| the problems as i see it with renewables is climate
| change. wind patterns can change, places can become arid.
| We could even see catastrophies blocking out the sun for
| days, months or even years. So while renewables are cheap
| to build right now we shouldn't rely on them completely.
| We also need to solve the storage part that is major
| issue for solar and wind even though imo they should only
| be used for creating synthetic fuels
| thrown_22 wrote:
| >- electric cars are still burning fossil fuels cause
| powerplants burn fossil fuels (yeah, but electric cars go
| ~2 times further on 1 liter of fuel even if all our power
| came from fossil fuels which it doesn't)
|
| No they don't. When you add the efficiency of the grid,
| the charging station, charging the battery and
| discharging the battery burning a lump of coal to power
| your Tesla has _no_ advantage over burning a bottle of
| petrol for your non SUV.
|
| This is a lot like the meme that solar is cheap - the
| part that's always left out: "At noon".
| hgomersall wrote:
| Let's consider the numbers... A decent modern combined
| cycle gas turbine can achieve 60% efficiency, so let's
| take 50% to be conservative. Transmission losses are
| generally better than 15%, so that leaves a combined
| efficiency of 42.5%. A pessimistic charge/discharge
| efficiency for lithium ion would be 80% and I'd expect
| the charger to be 90% efficient, which gives us a total
| (pessimistic) efficiency of 31%.
|
| An internal combustion engine has an optimistic
| efficiency of about 30%.
|
| So, even if we ignore all the losses in fuel distribution
| for ICE cars and ignore regenerative effects in electric
| cars and the ability to incrementally decarbonise the
| grid, electric still has a slight advantage.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| You're missing the engine efficiency. Which is another
| ~90% efficiency process. That brings it down to be lower
| than an ice.
| Retric wrote:
| Those are incredibly pessimistic numbers for power plants
| and optimistic numbers for ICE. On average 5% of the
| electricity transmitted and distributed in the United
| States is wasted your other numbers are similarly
| inaccurate.
|
| ICE engines are only ~30% efficient under optimal
| conditions, idling still consumes fuel and engines idle a
| lot in normal driving including coasting down a large
| hill, slowing down, stoplights etc. Similarly turning on
| and heavy acceleration etc is extremely inefficient. This
| is where the primary benefit comes for hybrid cars not
| regenerative breaking.
|
| Also, comparing gasoline to electricity ignores all the
| energy required to make gasoline. Oil refineries both use
| serious amounts of energy and release massive quantities
| of CO2 directly.
| hgomersall wrote:
| Indeed, I merely wished to bound the problem.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| You forgot to include the other liter of fuel spent
| extracting, refining, and shipping the first one. Hence
| 2x. Also coal has double the emissions of oil per kWh so
| on an energy basis it's 1/4th
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Keep moving the goalposts bud.
|
| OP made a blatantly false claim. She was wrong. That's
| it.
| da768 wrote:
| Of course, on the other side, there's never any pollution
| involved bringing fuel to the gas pump.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Or to bring coal to the power plant.
| [deleted]
| ilyt wrote:
| > - electric cars are still burning fossil fuels cause
| powerplants burn fossil fuels (yeah, but electric cars go
| ~2 times further on 1 liter of fuel even if all our power
| came from fossil fuels which it doesn't)
|
| So do hybrids. Burning fuel at power station isn't 2x as
| efficient as burning it in ICE engine; most of the
| savings come from not wasting power while braking
| bityard wrote:
| I love my Prius, but over my years of driving it my
| suspicion is that the regen braking contributes VERY
| little power to the battery, and I try to brake using
| regen as much as possible. I would guess that most Prius
| drivers (who drive the car like a normal car, which is
| even what Toyota says to do) get back a truly trivial
| amount of energy out of regen braking.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me if full EV regen braking is much
| more efficient and useful, though.
| taneq wrote:
| I seem to recall estimates on various EV conversion
| forums that regen braking saves 5-10% range at best, and
| the more efficiently you drive normally, the less
| difference it makes.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| Fwiw, my truck has an electric motor and battery, for
| extra torque only, not for any hybrid ability, but due to
| its regenerative braking ability I'm still on its
| original brake pads at 50k miles.
| CarVac wrote:
| It's optimal to coast if you can avoid regeneration, but
| if you _must_ brake then you want as much of that to be
| regenerative as possible.
|
| On both EVs and on hybrids.
|
| EVs have more regenerative braking power and capacity
| though; my Prius fills up rapidly when descending a
| mountain.
| IndrekR wrote:
| My EV reports 18 kWh/100km for driving and 4 kWh/100km
| gained from recuperation. That is significant.
| lazide wrote:
| One correction - a typical coal burning power plant is
| approximately 33% efficient at converting fuel to energy
| [https://www.energy.gov/fecm/transformative-power-
| systems], and combined cycled natural gas power plants
| are 45-57% efficient. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/topi
| cs/engineering/natural-gas...]
|
| Direct ICE vehicles are between 11-27% efficient.
| [https://sciendo.com/pdf/10.2478/rtuect-2020-0041]
|
| So even a inefficient coal plant is about 50% more
| efficient than a very efficient normal ICE car, and
| combined cycle natural gas IS 2x more efficient than a
| very efficient normal ICE car - and about 5x more
| efficient than a non-efficient ICE car.
|
| Lots of cross comparisons can be made, but on overage,
| even with transmission losses, charging losses, etc. it
| would be very unusual for an EV + power plant combo to be
| _less efficient end to end_ than directly fueling a
| traditional ICE vehicle. If it was, it would likely just
| be a few percent.
|
| CapEx is a real concern here of course, and logistics.
|
| But opex and energy efficiency are solidly in the EV
| camp.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > So do hybrids
|
| No they don't. All the energy in a hybrid comes from an
| internal combustion engine which is generally less than
| 40%. Hybrids help by running the the ICE only when it
| would be efficient to do so but they can't help in
| constant speed highway driving.
| timthorn wrote:
| > All the energy in a hybrid comes from an internal
| combustion engine which is generally less than 40%.
|
| Only if you define hybrid to exclude plug-in hybrids.
| Almost all my driving is on charge, with only longer
| trips 2 or 3 times a month relying on the ICE in my
| hybrid.
| salty_biscuits wrote:
| Partially true. You can get away with a more efficient
| thermodynamic cycle on the ICE due to the more uniform
| load on the engine so they can be more efficient.
| lolinder wrote:
| Burning fuel at a single power station that is reasonably
| distant from populated areas is _far_ better from a
| health perspective than tens of thousands of small,
| poorly-regulated engines burning fuel within 10 yards of
| people 's homes. I would take electric over ICE even if
| it were 1-to-1 on fuel consumption, just to feel like I
| can safely breath outside again.
| 8note wrote:
| As long as they're still cars, you should keep holding
| your breath. Tires and breaks still give off the
| polluting dust, not to mention the noise
| ajuc wrote:
| > Burning fuel at power station isn't 2x as efficient as
| burning it in ICE engine
|
| ICE engines are under 30% efficient (not counting the
| losses to accelerating/breaking and standing on idle in
| traffic jams), multi-stage turbines at powerplants are
| 50-60% efficient (but the 60% ones are rare).
| haberman wrote:
| > most of the savings come from not wasting power while
| braking
|
| That doesn't check out for me. ICE engines are
| inefficient because much of the energy from the fuel is
| converted into heat rather than kinetic energy. Every ICE
| engine has a radiator whose sole purpose is to vent off
| waste heat from the engine. ICE engines don't even need a
| distinct heating element to keep the cabin warm, the
| waste heat from the engine is more heat than the cabin
| will ever need.
|
| I don't know that much about how power stations work, but
| surely it is not this inefficient.
|
| EDIT: Did a bit of reading on gas/coal power plants and
| it sounds like they are indeed very inefficient: as bad
| as 20 percent, as good as 60 percent:
| https://www.energy.gov/fecm/how-gas-turbine-power-plants-
| wor...
|
| That is mildly horrifying.
| aftbit wrote:
| Look up the Carnot cycle and its efficiency. This is
| theorized to be the best possible efficiency for a heat
| engine. All heat engines work by rejecting a large
| fraction of their input heat to an output heat sink. I've
| heard efficiencies in the 30-50% range for big coal and
| nuclear plants, much lower for smaller plants.
| 8note wrote:
| For specifity, ICE engines will look more like an Otto
| cycle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_cycle
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| It seems with electric cars there is always another
| compaint. First came the long tail pipe argument, I think
| even the most ardent of naysayers have realised that that
| one is bullshit.
|
| Then the batteries were going to be scattered about the
| countryside. Except most of them are still in cars, the
| demand for batteries from crashed damaged cars is high
| and the life even in early models appears to exceed
| expectations.
|
| The reality is that Tesla has replaced the Ferrari as the
| car to aspire to. Nissan have even started producing
| their e-power cars who's main advantage is that they
| drive like an electric car (using a petrol engine as
| generator). Electric cars are going to be a thing, the
| only limit it battery tech and to my mind that only
| changes the eventual market share, if some of the battery
| tech pans out it could be close to 100%. I'm expecting
| more 60% or so, battery tech will be good enough for most
| people.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Here in the UK (and I believe most of Europe), they're
| planning to ban sales of new ICE cars in I believe 2030.
| As such, 100% uptake (or close enough, perhaps there will
| some exceptions for specialised use cases) is almost
| guaranteed.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I'm in the UK too. I think the 2030 date is unrealistic.
| I'm pro-electric cars but we're still a long way away
| from it being the only option. At the very least we need
| widespread on street charging for the half of people who
| don't have the option to charge at home. Rapid charging
| is ok but not suitable for exclusive use.
| mqus wrote:
| In Europe. the greens are only talking about it, but no
| concrete law was proposed or even planned afaik. But VW
| did talk about no longer selling ICE cars in 2035 [1].
| But as always, 2030 is long ways off and there is
| probably a lot of marketing in it, let's see how it plays
| out.
|
| [1] https://carthrust.com/2021/06/28/vw-says-no-to-ice-
| powered-c...
| kodah wrote:
| Personally, I think both ends of these conversations could
| see improvement. A lot of people on here are rich and well-
| to-do so if you tell them the thing they bought for
| $45-$90k is more of a luxury than an environmental benefit
| or investment they'll get upset. Likewise, when rich people
| tell everyone their flatulents don't stink but others do,
| it'll make people upset, especially if the price tag to
| non-stinking-flatulents is high.
|
| Civility and mutual respect tend to go a lot farther than
| "just facts".
| vkou wrote:
| Or a story similar to coal power, where people found it wasn't
| that hard to extend and grow our usage of it a lot longer than
| originally planned. Where there's an economic will, we will
| find a political way.
|
| But all in all, it's very good to know that solar is a better
| form of power generation that we thought.
| jeffbee wrote:
| "Experts once warned millions of tons of waste from solar panels
| was on the horizon"
|
| Eh, no expert ever warned that. It was always an overblown issue,
| taken up by bored members of the press with deadlines to meet and
| column-inches to fill with words, shadow-funded by oil interest
| astroturf campaigns.
| standardUser wrote:
| Manufactured goods require resources and produce waste, film at
| 11.
| nautilius wrote:
| Do you have some resources about recycling of panels? I
| understand the point of the article is it's no longer the
| pressing issue it was once considered (by some), but I am
| curious if it's now just a delayed problem, or if recycling is
| a solved problem? Thanks!
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Industrial scale recycling is both extant and has been
| mandatory in many countries for close to a decade
| http://www.solarwaste.eu/
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://news.energysage.com/recycling-solar-panels/
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/16/australi.
| ..
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640.
| ..
|
| https://blog.veolianorthamerica.com/how-to-recycle-solar-
| pan...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-solar-recycling-
| idUSKBN1J...
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| It's mostly silicon, how bad could the waste be?
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Cyanide is just carbon and nitrogen. How could it be possibly
| toxic?
| ilyt wrote:
| Can't just melt it into a blob like you can with glass
| hwillis wrote:
| Elements and chemicals are very different things. Silicon is
| the #2 most common element on earth and if you smash a bunch
| of solar panels, they turn into sand when they get wet. Or if
| you just wait.
|
| Even pure silicon metal is totally benign, even in large
| amounts. Certainly safer than iron, which can kill you in
| relatively small amounts if it's in a bioavailable form.
| Silicon is already literally everywhere, in every form it
| will reasonably be transformed into.
|
| Even the boron and phosphorus that make up a tiny percent of
| cells are extremely benign. The biggest issues are the tin
| fingers and solder, and probably the lead that is often
| present. But lead is also far from necessary. And
| unfortunately, the human race is going to be dealing with
| lead dust for a while already, just from how it used to be in
| gasoline.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Solar modules contain lead for soldering and some contain
| cadmium telluride (CdTe).[1] If handled and recycled correctly,
| the risk of exposure of lead and cadmium into the environment
| is minimal. However, there is a possibility that such materials
| are released by accident (fire, cracks) or improper disposal.
| That is why there are demands that solar modules containing
| CdTe should be basically abandoned, as there exist
| alternatives. However, the overall risk appears to be
| comparable to that of other products containing these
| materials, such as many consumer electronics.
|
| [1] CdTe has a low toxicity. However, it may pose a significant
| hazard if its cadmium is released by some chemical reaction,
| which cannot generally be ruled out.
| hwillis wrote:
| > Solar modules contain lead for soldering
|
| Not all of them, and lead is also non-essential. Most solder
| in other contexts is already lead-free. It's also pretty
| minor compared to the other sources of lead in our lives
| already.
|
| > some contain cadmium telluride (CdTe)
|
| _only_ "thin film" cells, which are virtually obsolete-
| they're the flexible kind that you get in "cell charging"
| backpacks and stuff. Price decreases in silicon in large-
| scale use, so they have absolutely no bearing on renewable
| energy. They're not worth mentioning- a 100x increase in
| solar power will not increase the amount of cadmium cells at
| all.
| Archelaos wrote:
| The reports I quoted in reply to another comment here
| claimed a rather high market share for CdTe cells and
| predicted massively increasing volumns in the future. So
| even if they might become obsolete for "classic" flat
| panels, they seem to remain with us for "flexible"
| solutions, arn't they?
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| They've been completely abandoned for a while now. If you
| stack the small portion of CdTe ones neatly somewhere,
| someone will want the Te soon enough.
|
| Lead is already mostly phased out.
| Archelaos wrote:
| This does not seem to be the case. I googled "cdte cells
| market share" and immediately found a couple of Web-sites
| that say otherwise (although their numbers differ quite
| considerably):
|
| https://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/cadmium-
| te...
|
| https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/587880725/cadmium-
| telluride-...
|
| https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/as-demand-rises-
| exp...
| cjlars wrote:
| >The report projected that the United States would have a
| cumulative total of 7.5 to 10 million metric tons of solar panel
| waste in 2050.
|
| This compares to 292 million tons of total landfill waste in 2018
| alone [1], putting solar panel waste on the order of 0.1% of
| total waste produced in the US between now and 2050.
|
| [1] https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-
| waste-...
| morsch wrote:
| Note that this figure is from the 2016 EPA report which the
| article claims (based on a new paper) may be overblown.
| epistasis wrote:
| And to give some further context to the over-inflated 10M
| tons of solar panel waste stat (over 30 years), our carbon
| emissions from fossil fuels are about 570M tons per year into
| the atmosphere. That doesn't count all the equipment used for
| extraction of fossil fuels, all the massive amounts of toxic
| waste water that comes with fossil fuel extraction, all the
| ash from coal, etc.
|
| Which is to say, all the concern, even on inflated numbers,
| was FUD and a distraction from real problems.
| weaksauce wrote:
| > was FUD and a distraction from real problems.
|
| or actual malice from the bad actors paid for by the fossil
| fuel companies to spread distrust in the transition to a
| more sustainable clean energy system.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I normally appreciate links to studies with numbers in the
| comments, but as the others have pointed out: This article is
| referring _to that study_.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| >If solar panels can last 40 to 50 years, which is roughly double
| what used to be the rule of thumb for their life span
|
| Presumably, these panels face ever diminishing efficiencies. What
| is the threshold where it makes sense to replace a working, but
| low efficiency panel with a new one? That is, if a field of
| ancient generation-1 panels is operating at 5% efficiency, is it
| worth the expense to tear them out and replace them with
| generation N?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| That's a good question. Setting aside climate change and fossil
| fuel issues, the general answer is something like when the
| present value of a new installation, minus installation cost,
| is greater than the present value of the existing installation.
| Estimation can't be precise but after 20 or 25 years, the
| homeowner will have some idea of the remaining efficiency
| they're dealing with. They might know the reliability of their
| inverters, too.
|
| The replacement installation should be cheaper since initial
| permitting and electrical hookup is in place, and the roof
| mount might be reusable.
|
| Tax incentives to modernize old solar installations will factor
| significantly.
|
| Put another way: how high did your electric bill have to be to
| justify installing panels in the first place?
| fbdab103 wrote:
| I was thinking of industrial installations, but similar issue
| with residential. I assume that not many roofs are good after
| 20-30 years, so by the time the solar panel warranty starts
| to expire, it is time to get a new roof. Might as well
| upgrade panels at the same time.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Ah, sure. Yes, similar math.
|
| I forgot that for residential, in many areas the
| replacement panels would probably come about like a typical
| roof replacement: after a storm, subsidized by insurance.
| That may be the case with industrial/commercial as well,
| but I'm not familiar with insurance trends there.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Usually, the warranty will guarantee a 90% power output for the
| first 10 years and a 80% power output for the entire 25 years.
| In fact, some panels can even remain over 80% efficient past
| the end of their lives.
|
| https://www.deegesolar.co.uk/how_long_do_solar_panels_last/
| jansan wrote:
| > some panels can even remain over 80% efficient past the end
| of their lives.
|
| Then it shouln't be the end of their lives, should it?
| kragen wrote:
| i explained this in a comment thread here 3 months ago
|
| > _your concern is like a kid worrying that if his parents buy
| him a lollipop they won 't be able to afford this month's
| rent...not completely disconnected from reality but it's way out
| of proportion_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32201803
|
| i touched on the points of longevity, total scale, recyclability,
| toxicity, and land use, and i calculated that the solar panels
| needed to power the entire world's total energy use would fit
| into a single reservoir in andhra pradesh
|
| i've been talking about this for years
|
| too bad fast company reporters don't read hn threads, dan gearino
| could have avoided embarrassing himself in his february article
| for inside climate news
|
| commenting here is a fucking waste of time, and so is reading
| fast company or inside climate news
| seltzered_ wrote:
| For conversational context, linking this recent article on solar
| waste touching more on the current state and concerns from the
| reverse logistics industry:
| https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-14/california...
| nostromo wrote:
| Aren't they mostly silicon and recyclable metals?
|
| If so, who cares about the waste? It depends on what's in the
| waste that matters, not its raw volume. The materials used in
| solar panels are both highly recyclable and environmentally
| benign, a great combination.
| akira2501 wrote:
| It's the Gallium Arsenide, from my understanding. There are
| processes to recover the Gallium, but it produces a waste
| that's very high in Arsenic.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| The only GaAs involved in solar is an optional amount in the
| power circuitry.
|
| CdTe was briefly a thing for abiut 30% of the market, but
| peoplewill want the Telerium soon enough. Modern panels are
| sand and about 50g/kW net of silver. Recycling is mandatory.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Hmm.. there are a number of different chemistries, and
| they're not all clearly labelled like batteries. It appears
| the switch from phosphoros/boron dopants to gallium was quite
| recent: https://theconversation.com/the-sunlight-that-powers-
| solar-p...
|
| But that's gallium dopant rather than GaAs.
|
| There's also CIGS and CdTe "thin film" solar cells, which are
| extremely toxic in even small amounts. But those chemistries
| were never very popular.
|
| As far as I can tell most cells currently installed are poly
| or monocrystalline silicon cells, which contain
| phosphoros/boron dopants and aluminium metallization for the
| contacts. Those are the cheapest and also least toxic
| formulation.
|
| (Fun fact: you know what popular component uses GaAs? Red
| LEDs!)
| scythe wrote:
| There are no commercial panels made of gallium arsenide. They
| are used in space, where efficiency rules over everything
| else, and for certain military applications.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8200097/
|
| There was a company, Alta Devices, that planned to
| commercialize GaAs thin-film (so light on materials usage)
| solar panels with nearly 30% efficiency, but they were bought
| up by Hanergy which ran into financial troubles and shut it
| down. It's not clear what happened to their patent portfolio,
| but their equipment was liquidated in 2020, and the founder
| now works for UC Berkeley.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Indeed. Compared to other the garbage that people put in
| landfills right now, this is nothing.
|
| Of course this article is a clever bit of FUD in disguise. By
| taking the problem seriously and then presenting a solution to
| the problem that never was real to begin with:
|
| 'We're gonna have (tens of millions) of metric tons of waste
| from PV. We're all gonna die,'"
|
| Actual quote from the article to convince us that there
| apparently are people that believe that. Classic FUD move. It's
| really, really, bad but the scientists are on it. So you can
| stop worrying now. But you had good reason to be worried and
| you should continue to be worried. That's the message.
|
| Except of course, there never was a problem to worry about. The
| purpose of this article is perpetuating the myth that there
| was.
|
| It's a nice business challenge how to recover some valuable
| metals from solar panels. And several companies are on that; as
| you would expect. But if they fail, we basically dump some
| inert material in a landfill. Not a big deal. People dump far
| worse things into landfills already.
| 3D30497420 wrote:
| I think this is taking an overly critical view of the
| article. I did a very quick search and this HBR article,
| which makes it sound like solar panel waste is expected to be
| a significant problem, was the top result:
| https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-dark-side-of-solar-power
|
| So clearly some people, including presumably some prominent
| ones, are saying this will be a problem. So I'd say it is
| good that there is data to address this criticism.
| colordrops wrote:
| They also last at least 25 years. There's no way that the waste
| from the panels is worse than 25 years of CO2 emissions.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| My thought as well. CO2 gets dispersed in the atmosphere and
| is produced each time you burn fuel. Panels stay in place,
| the waste is produced several orders of magnitude less and
| you can collect it in the same form you produced it.
|
| It has to be so much better.
| __pache__ wrote:
| I'm super confused, how is this better for the Earth?
| Aren't you using a gigantic amount of CO2 to make these
| panels that work intermittently, with giant batteries to
| help make them realiable?
|
| Why not just use 1 reliable power system, instead of having
| 1 unreliable backed up by 1 reliable?
| Mesopropithecus wrote:
| Not following, which 1 reliable power system do you mean?
| __pache__ wrote:
| Any.
|
| Solar/Wind, for example, are not reliable.
|
| Nuclear, for example, is reliable.
|
| Instead of having Solar/Wind with batteries and all this
| nonsense, along with Nuclear for its stability, just skip
| the nonsense and go straight to Nuclear. Solar/Wind are
| terrible...
| derriz wrote:
| You can no more rely on nuclear or coal generation for
| your electricity without back-up than you can on wind or
| solar. A nuclear plant in the US is off-line for 29 days
| a year on average according to the EIA. So you still need
| back-up for your "reliable" nuclear, unless you want
| people using candles for nearly a month a year.
|
| All generation technologies are intermittent - they're
| just intermittent in different ways.
| __pache__ wrote:
| What is your argument...? Are you admitting "being
| intermittent is bad," while ignoring Solar is
| intermittent like 70% of the time vs 10% of the time for
| Nuclear?
|
| ...great argument?
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37252
|
| doesn't seem like you interpreted this correctly, seems
| bad faith for sure.
|
| > A scheduled shutdown of a nuclear power plant is
| generally timed to coincide with the plant's refueling
| cycle. Nuclear power plants typically refuel every 18 to
| 24 months, often during the fall and spring when
| electricity demand is lower.
|
| It's shut down every ~2 years, not "every year."
|
| > _During the past six years, average refueling outages
| have become shorter, decreasing from an average of 46
| days in 2012 to 34 days in 2018._
|
| They're getting better and better.
|
| So adjust the above 10% downtime number I gave, Nuclear
| is down ~3-5% of the time it sounds like. With
| improvements, this can probably get down to 1%.
| Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
|
| EDIT: not to mention this is an implementation problem.
| You can have multiple small reactors that never need
| maintenance where you just hot swap an old reactor for a
| new one.
|
| https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-are-small-
| modular-...
|
| The anti-science crowd is nuts on this stuff.. it's not
| _that hard..._
| derriz wrote:
| I though my argument was clear - that you need back-up
| for nuclear power also?
|
| You accuse me of bad faith for quoting a number which
| includes both unscheduled and scheduled shutdowns by
| comparing with a number which only include the latter.
|
| And I don't even understand where this is supposed to be
| going because even if plants never had unscheduled
| stoppages, you'd still need back-up.
|
| But anyway, I find your tone overly aggressive. So it's
| unlikely that any discussion will be productive.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| Popular solar markets like Australia are filled with junky
| panels because we ended up in a race to the bottom price-
| wise. I can say with certainty that the panels bought by the
| average consumer aren't lasting 25 years. In Western
| Australia we have the cheapest solar in the world. Just don't
| ask how long your system will last for.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| What's the failure mode?
|
| Degradation is one thing, but are the interconnects between
| the embedded cells failing so they're outputting 0V? Or
| over-integration and the micro-inverter fails? Or?
| __pache__ wrote:
| wait, why are CO2 emissions "bad?" it might even literally
| take 20-25 years to "pay off the CO2" used to make, deliver,
| and install the solar panels...
|
| to me it seems like our CO2 emissions are not bad and the
| effects on climate are very minor. this is playing out in
| real time as we make dire predictions that never seem to come
| to fruition. the world is ending in 12 years, said someone
| popular in ~2016. Well, halfway there, lady!
| Mistletoe wrote:
| There's nothing we could say to change your mind since
| you've already ignored all the science that exists.
| __pache__ wrote:
| aperson_hello wrote:
| Making and installing solar panels doesn't cost anywhere
| that much CO2. Best numbers I see suggest payback in ~3
| years assuming they're produced with coal power (and the
| numbers are better if they're produced with cleaner power,
| though electricity is fungible, so I'm not sure if that
| really makes sense to do). As a quick gut check, look at
| unsubsidized solar install costs - they're significantly
| lower than the cost of the electricity they generate in the
| 5-10 year range in almost all lower and middle latitude
| places...
|
| Also, idiots stating unscientific garbage (like the world
| ending in 2028) doesn't mean that there's no science behind
| it... Just that there was an idiot making up BS.
|
| Edit: it was a 2019 quote, not a 2016 quote. So we have all
| the way until 2031 until the world "ends"... Still an
| idiotic quote
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