If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much Toxic Waste?

Very good book but tech went lot further than David expected in many places (ie. solar power efficiency vs price).

This page tried to keep it updated:

https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/3/30/l6qcqgoedse1...

David MacKay has done some great work, but I feel I need to present some of the criticism he has received, for balance. In particular, there is a perception that he is biased towards nuclear energy (understating its drawbacks, while also being unnecessarily dismissive of renewables).

People can consider these articles for themselves:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/professor-david-mackay-br...

"Professor David MacKay: Britain ‘must go nuclear’ to control climate"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/03/idea-of-...

"Idea of renewables powering UK is an 'appalling delusion' – David MacKay"

The latter, from 2016, includes the line:

"There is this appalling delusion that people have that we can take this thing that is currently producing 1% of our electricity and we can just scale it up..."

For reference, according to:

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/wind-solar-overtak...

"Renewables’ share of electricity generation shot up to 29 per cent, while nuclear sources accounted for around 21 per cent."

The book was a great (and depressing) read 10 years ago.

Today, it is completely out of date on PV, wind. Fingers crossed for same progress on storage & EVs.

Throw in bio-fuels for aviation, and maybe hydrogen for marine and heavy transport, and civilization may yet survive /s

...Here's a _1000_ word synopsis he wrote ...

FTFY

Thank you. I found Dasher a long time ago (feels like a decade) but lost the link. Have been thinking about it often since. Finally, thanks to you I once again have it available

5-6 years ago the energy needed to produce panels compared to their energy output reached parity. Now the energy needed to produce panels is 6-40 times less than a life time output of the panels. Today the energy input for producing and installing panels is less than the there energy output in most places. And with the efficiency gains in production of the panels and the efficiency gains of the panels electricity production every year the equation is getting better. As the world moves towards a energy mix with more renewables every year the solar power becomes cleaner. Where as most fossil fuels power production has stagnated and has little or no improvemets. With big oil and car companies spending money on politicians to not improve efficienies and decrease production.

This is the right question.

A few years ago I worked for a wind turbine company (Admittingly a crappy one) and I was one of two software engineers,

My first job was to analyse all of the data about 300 turbines were sending back home, and build a dashboard.

Well a few weeks later after checking all of the data, it turns out that the entire fleet of turbines actually consumed slightly more energy than they produced.

This was because of many manufacturing problems meant there were several frequencies that the turbine couldn’t spin at because it would generate a resonance and shatter or break something. So the system was frequently applying the break to stop the turbine destroying itself.

After several days of head scratching and double-checking and triple-checking the data, I went to the mechanical engineers and they finally sheepishly admitted they knew these things were net energy consumers rather than producers.

This doesn’t even take into account the energy budget of cost of production and distribution.

This isn’t the case for the big turbines you see out in the field, I’m really just reenforcing the parent comments point that total energy needs to be considered.

EROEI calculations are hard to do and even harder to compare accurately, because you have to decide what second and third order effects "count". Most reliable ones I've seen put the lifetime output at 5x to 10x the input. This is actually better than some of the unconventional oil extraction methods.

Yes, right now they do have a carbon footprint but it is far lower than fossil fuels.

In the future - when production is done with green energy - that will get far lower.

https://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/ho...

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/opinion/mondaycop22-...

Good and interesting question, and I would like to know too, but a couple of points here

- You probably meant to say this but, obviously, there has to be a usage time variable in the calculation somewhere. They will presumably have a lifespan where they can be deployed outdoors without replacement/maintenance, and perhaps this lifespan itself but certainly the average hours usage per day will then vary with climate. There might be tradeoffs in the design and materials used which increase durability but lower yield, but then affect energy required to produce, etc, etc. My point is that it's really quite complex and I'm quite sure there is no one answer, especially with the technology changing (improving) all the time.

- You have to walk before you can run. Even supposing there is a deficit today, the only way we get to a future where there is an energy surplus with solar tech is by deploying the not-good-enough-yet tech today and improving it through iteration to the point where it is good enough. Again, then whether it is worth pursuing or not depends a bit also on that (predicted) rate of improvement.

A lot of the people who mention EROI are basically conspiracy theorists, and the basic math they use makes no sense.

This website debunks some of the stuff that you'll find if you just blindly Google EROI:

http://bountifulenergy.blogspot.com

However, even the crazy people generally aren't claiming that solar panels are net negative.

It‘s called EROI and information is widely available.

> are solar panels net energy producers?

Yes (based on data from 2008). See at the bottom, under Mythconceptions: http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_41.shtml

Producers make profits by selling solar panels. Customers save money by buying solar panels.

Unlikely that this would be the case if solar panels were not net energy producers.

Your apparent inability to do a simple search makes me think you just want to send us on a wild goose chase proving everything from first principle, or alternatively to saw some FUD around solar technology.

I mean, what answer are you willing to accept? Here's one investing as much energy as your question:

Yes, solar power is net positive.

why not google it? The answer is widely available.

Or are you “just asking”?

True - however if you consider the true lifecycle from start to end (including construction costs, and decomissioning) nuclear is one of the most expensive power sources.

The costs for proper decomissioning of a nuclear plant and safe storage of the used materials are excluded in most analysis, as the time and cost horizon is so large.

On Solar Panels: there are some very interesting projects by large environmental service providers underway that use high pressure water or very high temperatures, to separate the glass from metal frame.

I think a similar hurdle are carbon fibres, you can't burn or shred them (carcinogenic micro fibres).

There are some interesting projects that try to clean and reuse the fibres through some kind of chemical baths..but most of the old e.g. wind turbines are just stored at a giant wind turbine graveyard right know.

It's a fascinating field!

Globally, hydro is three times as risky as rooftop solar, there were ~171,000 dead from the Banquio Dam failure alone - http://www.nuceng.ca/refer/risk/risk.htm

Also, I keep seeing figures for rooftop solar and not solar in general, and the risk for rooftop solar is due to the risk of working on a roof. If solar was mandated in new build and major roof repair, wherever it made sense to install it, this risk can be greatly reduced as the largest risk is during putting the scaffolding up and taking it down again.

The waste is radioactive for many human lifetimes however. That's the piece that seems highly irresponsible to me: assigning radioactive waste management to many future generations. IIRC, there are some reactors with waste which lasts less than a human lifetime, or generate waste which can be utilized or broken down with an additional reactor. I could get behind those. The solar waste problem is fixed with a recycling upcharge on purchase and some additional cost reduction on the technology. This is a tame problem compared to radioactive waste which will likely outlast the civilization which produced it, never mind the individuals.

You say afraid as if it is a bad thing.

When you consider the timescale of nuclear power plants and how long nuclear power has existed, safety stats seem to have a pretty low sample size with a lot of uncharted territory.

That fear you mention is a very real and important one, because even if 99% of plants operate under strict safety, it only takes one failure to cause massive damage. Beyond lives and into land and resources, and additional risks of further ecological harm.

For me, when considering if nuclear power is worth it, I think that we have so many alternatives that will work well enough for a long-term horizon (let's say 200 years) that any sort of risks of charting that new territory in nuclear power and having that very large risk is not worth it currently.

That's not to say it won't be worth it in the future perhaps as climate change worsens or in a century with additional safety tools possibly fueled by additional scientific insight, but right now I think you're severely undermining that some (not all) fear of nuclear power comes from a very rational place.

"That also includes every nuclear disaster ever."

Assuming there won't be any disasters worse than what has already occurred.

Presumably any new nuclear capacity would use safer designs, but still, the tail end single event worst case scenario is a lot scarier.

When you consider the whole life cycle of nuclear, you have to take into account the next few hundred thousand years as the waste loses its radioactivity. Who knows how many natural disasters, and therefore deaths, will happen based on nuclear waste that is currently stored in insecure, leaky above-ground containers. If you consider deaths per year of risk, there's no way that nuclear energy is as safe as solar.

Nuclear power is dead for economic reasons.

Yes, I know, engineers are somewhat insulted by the public's refusal to accept their risk modelling. That's why this has become somewhat of a cultural fight. It sometimes feels like there's a segment of armchair scientists, forever stuck in the science-fiction of the 50s, and not noticing that the real world has long since moved on, to something far better than their vision of a nuclear-powered vacuum cleaner for every happy wife.

Even if you somehow manage to change the perception (which is unlikely, considering you probably wouldn't even accept "perception" as anything real worthy of consideration), it doesn't matter: Actual scientists have long moved on and, with a lot of help of forward-thinking politicians, invested into wind, battery, and solar technology, making it cost-competitive with even coal today.

I thought nuclear was many times safer than hydro, especially if you compare the fatalities from the Chernobyl disaster to the Banqiao dam.

Hopefully more countries start reprocessing spent nuclear fuel the way the French do, though this does raise proliferation concerns.

Why do so many people out there keep harping on nuclear? Are they willing to pay for it? No. They'll be the first ones complaining when their rates shoot through the roof.

Look, if you want nuclear power, then the government will need to finance it. Some of these other sources are at 1-2 cents a kWh, how is a private investor supposed to finance a nuclear power plant that competes with those rates? Even if there were no safety or environmental regulations at all, you still couldn't get there. I'm sorry, but there exists no private investor dumb enough to finance a power generation facility that expensive, that would reside that far down the dispatch stack. It just won't happen.

I think people prefer less risky now. Now that faith is partially gone, living in fear of catastrophy is worse than lower energy production.

I'm not sure why they need to be recycled. Aren't they mostly just silicon? Silicon is sand? Aren't there a lot of other things that are more productively recyclable?

Let's be fair to the article author - he's advising that we get ahead of the externalities of mass solar by considering the read of end of life costs - this is effectively the same thing as when people include the cost and risks of spent fuel storage for nukes.

Also, the author's background and bias is for nuclear, not goal. Guy hates coal, he's not a climate change denier. He just doesn't think that wind and solar are an acceptable base for powering modern societies and systems.

The alternative isn't coal, the alternative is nuclear.

It's better to ignore these kinds of threads and not post troll comments.

Moreover, the article also mentions Arsenic.

Arsenic is not used in production of PV cells today for exactly that reason, and also because it is much slower diffusing bulk dopant in comparison to Phosphorus.

The only reason Arenic was used in first generation of solar cells (eighties) is because of technology commonality with the microelectronics industry. Bulk manufactured cells never used Arsenic dopants.

No, plain silicon solar cells making 99% of the market do not contain cadmium.

https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2017/06/causes-solar-p...:

”According to NREL, modules can fail because of unavoidable elements like thermal cycling, damp heat, humidity freeze and UV exposure. Thermal cycling can cause solder bond failures and cracks in solar cells. Damp heat has been associated with delamination of encapsulants and corrosion of cells. Humidity freezing can cause junction box adhesion to fail. UV exposure contributes to discoloration and backsheet degradation.”

Electronic devices undergo decay like anything else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_of_electronic_componen... It's unavoidable.

Guy is a pro-nuclear activist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shellenberger#Position...

Doesn’t mean he is a sellout, but certainly not neutral.

I see Shellenberger is still claiming there that PV uses rare earth elements. What a baldfaced lie.

I'm actually a little repulsed that it took me so long to find your informed and concise rebuttal here.

So this piece is a hit piece filled with blatant misinformation, on an investment news website.

Why is this comment so far down the page? Is it factually wrong some way?

He is running for governor and a democrat btw. He used to be against nuclear until he actually did the effort of understanding the facts and came out for it. This made him persona-non-grata by the environmentalists.

So if you want to talk about lobbyism...

But thanks for proving the point. Claiming he is a lobbyist anymore than you are is exactly the kind of shaming tactics that are being used instead of arguments to silence people the majority don't wan't to hear..

Your opinion is poorly informed. In the future we will still need high-exergy energy sources. PV provides this; thermal tech doesn't.

Also, storage solutions for electricity exist, and these are not fringe/academic technology. For example, electrical vehicles exist today. Once everyone has an EV, that'll add ~50 kWh of storage capacity per EV to the grid.

There is a third option - safe stockpiling of the old panels until they become economical to harvest. They are pretty inert - just a concrete floor and a roof overhead could prevent it.

The advantage of concentrated thermal solar is that it can provide pure base-load 24-7 with its thermal capacity. The disadvantages are the expense, glare, and on a smaller note that they ironically need fuel to start up and get the salt molten again - when it must be down for maintenance. Not technically zero carbon because of that - at least until it becomes viable to generate sufficient heat electrically with a grid.

It's largely not competitive with photovoltaics.

No one says that semiconductors are clean.

“If people are so inclined, they are free to surrender all modern conveniences”

Not really an acceptable response.

That's not really the proper way to think about this.

Computers with electricity and access to cheap and plentiful energy are a baseline for everything else in modern society.

Solar has a bunch of advantages but the idea that it together with wind is going to be able to solve our energy needs is simply misguided and thus it has to undergo the same Cost/Benefit analysis as everything else does.

Cleanest if and only if nobody makes a mistake. Otherwise you end up with unfixable messes. And decommissioning is hardly a solved or cheap problem.

Given that you cannot cheerfully give it to your worst enemy, nuclear has massive problems as the global solution for power. People are saying on the one hand that nuclear is the solution, but on the other that certain countries aren't allowed near it because it is much too dangerous.

We don't know this yet. We need a few thousand years to see, what had happend to the nuclear waste in the meantime. (Leaked to ground water? Used by terrorist? Accidents in migration of waste? Unknown unknowns?)

The sun is a hydrogen nuclear fusion reactor, when we talk about nuclear energy those are uranium nuclear fission reactor. Those are very very different.

Solar has far more deaths per terawatt than nuclear too (fitters falling off roofs really jacks the figures up). People need to look at the big picture or the entire lifecycle. All things considered nuclear is the cleanest and safest form of power we know.