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Comment by jaclaz | Hacker News Reader

... and without taking into account that after 15 or 20 - maybe 25 - years the panels will need to be replaced.

How "clean" is disposing of these depleted slabs of glass and silicon (or whatever other elements)?

How much will it cost?

It seems like most manufacturers have a 20/25-year standard, meaning that their panels should still be capable of producing 80% of their peak efficiency after 20/25 years in the field [1].

A 20% decrease over 20/25 years isn't bad at all. Compare that to the 3-4 automobiles that the average American family might buy during that period, or the normal 30-40 year lifespan of a coal generator [2].

Recycling glass and silicon is fairly straightforward, compared to other recycled materials (paper, plastics). Panel recycling will probably be complicated by whatever rare earth minerals are currently used in solar cells, but that's just another potential market.

[1]: http://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDesi...

[2]: http://qz.com/61423/coal-fired-power-plants-near-retirement/

[3]: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/smart-energy-solutions/de...

Edit: Forgot the source on 3-4 cars [4].

[4]: https://www.kbb.com/car-news/all-the-latest/average-length-o...

The 20 or maybe 25 years duration is not bad at all in itself, but before or later it has to be done, and usually noone talks about that when illustrating the "advantages" and "cleanness" of the solution.

I was not saying that disposing properly of such materials is not "straightforward", only that its costs (as well as those for the disposal of batteries, thanks _red for mentioning them) are rarely included in most cost estimations.

In EU countries it is now (since around 2012-2014 depending on the country) at least in theory OK - since you pay the cost of disposal to the manufacturer at install time, and when the plant will be depleted you can have the panels disposed for free (your money goes indirectly to a consortium for disposal of electronics goods).

Certainly. I chalk that up a certain amount of optimism surrounding solar energy (and renewables in general), not willful ignorance of the real costs of deploying any sort of infrastructure on a national scale.

Based on what you said, the EU seems to have figured out a responsible way to handle those costs, at least on the individual level.

Yes, though it has to be seen how well it will work out in the long term, when huge amounts of panels and batteries will be in need of being disposed of.

In any case the Law represents a good provision for the consumer/end user, JFYI:

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/weee/index_en.htm

http://www.solarwaste.eu/

Specifically in Italy:

http://www.solarwaste.eu/in-your-country/italy/

The resources are "distributed": >Waste originating from PV modules classified as household (B2C) waste (those installed in PV plants with a nominal power below 10 Kw) is financed by the Producers present in the market in the year when the costs occur according to their market share.

But only for "household" plants: >Waste originating from PV modules classified as non-household (B2B) waste (those installed in PV plants with a nominal power equal or above 10 Kw) placed on the market before 12/04/2014 is financed by the Producers when selling a new PV module replacing the old, in all other cases the financing is upon users. For waste originating from B2B PV modules placed on the market after 12/04/2014, the financial responsibility is upon Producers for the modules they placed on the market.

So there is IMHO a risk about companies that sell today but will be not anymore in business in 20/25 years time to pay for the disposal ...

... cannot say if there are some forms of insurance (or whatever) covering this possibility.

Right now (just for the record) the fee for WEEE (for business) is between 0.30 €/kg and 0.50 €/kg + shipment, which seems very little when you are dealing with "light" items like - say - LCD TV's or laptops, but not so little when you are dealing with CRT's or similar.

Thanks for the resources.

A bigger environmental problem is that many solar use mandates having batteries.

The average armchair environmentalist loves to ignore the thousands of tons of earth that must be mined to get enough rare earth minerals for a single battery to be constructed.

Lithium isn't a rare earth element. Batteries don't use rare earth elements. Some electric motors do, but that's a choice; Tesla's doesn't.

If you mean to say that lithium mining is a bad thing, then you might want to try to come up with a better measure of environmental impact than the number of tons of earth moved.

I can't find any evidence that Powerwall, for example, has any rare earths in it.

Can you?

How "clean" is taking off the top of a mountain for coal?

Compare the costs of restoring a mountain after we tear it down, extract the coal and burn it into the atmosphere. How much will that cost? What about moving cities inland? will that be more expensive than recycling solar panels?

There is no perfect energy system, but the status quo is clearly unsustainable, and solar disposal is a much more tractable problem than destructive extraction and atmospheric pollution.

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