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Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

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Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#141

Post by thrown_22 »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #123
thrown_22 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep moving the goalposts bud. OP made a blatantly false claim. She was wrong. That's it.

Pointing out you're equivocating lifecycle emissions with tailpipe in response to an assertion about energy is just pointing out you haven't reached the goalposts even after moving them. A tesla 3 (top selling ev) uses about 170Wh/km. From a very low efficiency coal plant including transmission and charging losses (you don't get to double count discharge loss) this would be about 0.6kWh (thermal) or about 170g of CO2…

You're ignoring what it takes to bring the coal to the powerplant too.

OP was making the point that boiler to wheels efficiency of electrics is higher than ices. It isn't when you factor in all the conversion losses.

It's a really simple point that battery zealots fail to grasp.

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#142

Post by newsclues »

fbdab103 wrote: post #6

>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 replac…

If you need x kw of power for daily use and your panels dip below that production figure you need to add more or replace the panels.

A market system for the lifecycle of panels to move the from new high value installation to lower cost ones with lower efficiency.

No need to recycle until they’ve been completely used.

Probably move them from the North to rural southern areas of America, or perhaps to the developing world who hopefully can use the last few watts before a local recycling facility.

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#143

Post by Gibbon1 »

colordrops wrote: post #69
nostromo wrote: post #33

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.

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.

I worry that I phat fingered a calc but estimating the mass of a solar panel vs the fuel needed to produce a similar amount of energy. Postulate is the energy inputs and price of commodities is strongly correlated with mass.

Rough guess is over 30 years a 300W solar panel puts out 20,000 kwh. And weighs about 40lbs. 20,000kwh would require burning about 4000lbs of natural gas. So the weight ratio of the panel/nat gas is 1/100.

That's an aggressive ratio.

Another weight vs fuel calc. An F150 consumes it's weight in fuel every 20,000 miles.

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#144

Post by __pache__ »

derriz wrote: post #108
__pache__ wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cy…

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 overl…

> I though my argument was clear - that you need back-up for nuclear power also?

Right, but who said otherwise? Your arguing against a straw man that doesn't exist, no one said: you never have to do maintenance on Nuclear.

Clearly Nuclear is 100x more reliable than Solar/Wind, easily.

> you'd still need back-up.

who said otherwise......... who are you arguing against? not making sense... this isn't relevant to what I'm saying..

> But anyway, I find your tone overly aggressive. So it's unlikely that any discussion will be productive.

fair enough! would appreciate you admitting you grossly misinterpreted the stats on the nuclear data you gave. seems bad faith. have a good one

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#145

Post by __pache__ »

aperson_hello wrote: post #117
__pache__ wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 o…

> Making and installing solar panels doesn't cost anywhere that much CO2.

...source?

Solar is unreliable, you _need_ another system, so you have to install 2 systems now. It _will_ be cheaper/less co2/etc.etc. to just install and use 1 system.

The real solution to reducing overall CO2 is clearly Nuclear. Do you disagree with this?

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#146

Post by throwaway46829 »

reilly3000 wrote: post #84
googlryas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 “depr…

I thought "yum"

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#147

Post by [deleted] »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #128
__pache__ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

There are roughly 40 million kgs of accessible, usable fissile material (U235 and Pu239) on Earth. Each kg produces 30-80TJ with maybe another 20 if you spend even more money to scavenge the last little bit via reprocessing. Newer reactors hold about 6 years of fuel and cycle some of it every couple of years. World energy consumption is approximately 550EJ. How are you proposing to fuel your reactors more than once?

[deleted]

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#148

Post by __pache__ »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #130
__pache__ wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

EBPT for PERC panels is 3-12 months. Far lower than nuclear and slightly lower than wind.

what does that even mean? how does this scale? is it the same cost at 1000x the demand to support things? ugh... this is so disingenuous. a nuclear install might support millions of people but the same solar would be insanely huge AND require multiple backups/batteries..

it is so clear solar/wind is worse than nuclear.

it is increasingly clear that our co2 output isn't that scary. we are "greening" the Earth. Sea level rise is well within normal bounds. Everything is _great.._

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#149

Post by TheSmiddy »

__pache__ wrote: post #76
worldsayshi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

The most reliable grids in the world are made up of a large number of small generators rather than a single source which when taken down takes down the entire grid.

If you were to start a new city disconnected from the rest of society then a combination of wind, solar, hydro, and batteries is the cheapest and most reliable system to power that city.

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#150

Post by samatman »

derriz wrote: post #100
__pache__ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

You're comparing scheduled maintenance in a 90+% uptime system with intermittent, unpredictable, correlated, continuous fluctuations in power, with capacity factors in the 10-30$ range of nameplate capacity.

I have a great solution for nuke plant downtime, this is going to blow your mind, wait for it: for every 14 plants worth of power, built, drumroll please.... 15 plants! Then maintain them on a schedule.

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