Do you think solar panel recycling will catch up to the coming wave of solar panel waste? Visit brilliant.org/undecided to sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership. If you liked this video, check out: The Reality of Carbon Capture ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HrRq2lzQb08.html
Senku "I say, If we can't sustain 7 billion people, Then let's try having 7 billion people look for a way to sustain 7 billion people. After all, that how science does thing." (Dr. Stone season 2 episode 10) Me: " We accidently changed the environment of the whole planet, wipe off several species of the face of the world and changed how the planet looks from space BY ACCIDENT, what would happen if we all decide 'nope, we are fixing this problem.' We could solve any problem in 20 years guaranteed."
Nothing is going to happen until people get realistic about their figures. You can only recycle existing panels that are dumped ie the numbers are not magic, todays working panels are tomorrows ready to be recycled panels. If the (median)average panel lifetime is 20 years then 2010 functional panels are the ones that need to be recycled in 2030. From SEIA/Wood ~20 times more panels were made in 2010 than in 2020. 12:05 if 2010 panels end up at $2.7B in 2030 then in 2040 we can expect 20 times that number or $54B. Now we have a much more accurate representation than the Veolia guestimate of $80B in 2050. Companies can then work out if a $54B solar panel recycling market in 2040 might make economical sense. There is just too many predictions floating around when we have access to more reliable numbers.
It will have to catch up, otherwise there will be a huge waste problem... the biggest hurdle will be getting notoriously short sighted politicians across the world to start planning for beyond the next election and put policies in place to encourage recycling.
I think we need a legal structure around solar before it gets big and powerful like the fossil fuel industry. For example, you could add a $10 solar recycling deposit fee to every panel. And then pay people who deliver solar panels to recycling centers back that fee. I'm concerned about leeching of rare earths and metals into the soil and water table while waiting for a good recycling method to develop. But at least having all the panels in one place will help make it cheaper to recycle them. And/Or the expected cost of recycling panels could be built into the panels as someone else suggested below. The only problem is other factions intercepting those fees to pay for a park or a road.
This panel can put out close to 100 watts ru-vid.comUgkxOqI2yqX0XVrhR2BMJciTWrHJpG8FhJyg when positioned in the appropriate southernly direction, tilted to the optimal angle for your latitude/date, and connected to a higher capacity device than a 500. The built in kickstand angle is a fixed at 50 degrees. Up to 20% more power can be output by selecting the actual date and latitude optimal angle.The 500 will only input 3.5A maximum at 18 volts for 63 watts. Some of the excess power from the panel can be fed into a USB battery bank, charged directly from the panel while also charging a 500. This will allow you to harvest as much as 63 + 15 = 78 watts.If this panel is used to charge a larger device, such as the power station, then its full output potential can be realized.
A lot of solar panels are scrapped because they have dropped below the required output for commercial use. Selling these panels at a really low price to be used in off grid solutions would help a lot of people and give a profit in relation to paying for recycling. I am surprised that this is not being done yet. A panel that has dropped below its optimum efficiency would still be really useful in non critical use cases.
It is being done. Will Prowse has a few videos dedicated to testing old solar panels you can buy. The problems are often that the panels are degraded differently from each other. Nevertheless, you can make a really cheap arrays with this method if you have the time and space.
@@ThisRandomUsername The problem is that there are only a few people doing it, the companies scrapping their panels are not making them widely available, or advertising the fact. It may be that they are on sale in the US, but here in the UK, there are a few sellers on Ebay, but selling at prices that are almost the same as new budget panels.
@@terryhayward7905 That sounds like you have a business opportunity then. Here in South Africa I have been keeping an eye on the second-hand classifieds, and I've come across quite a few good deals where people are selling 5-10 year old panels cheaply. Maybe people in the UK expect too high of a salary, meaning things get scrapped more easily because the manual labour of sorting through old panels or removing them and testing them isn't worth the payback on the market.
I bought some 20 year old German panel and they are working at 98% of their sticker's output. I paid $40 for 200W panels. $400 got me 2KW, I can not complain. They are the roof of my woodshed, I made custom flashings for them and used them like big shingles. It was the deal of a lifetime! Buy used panels, check them with your volt meter. Even if they don't work, they can still keep the rain out. No need to trash them or melt them down, just keep using them.
they are waterproof and some are opaque even and of course glass area is air tight. But they cost much less tehn 20 cents a watt to manufacture now and are much lighter per watt and take less area and last longer old ones are not waste OF COURSE it requires a different mindset in use a disruptive one such deals are easy to find currently... and the panels to come are better then those inthe past selling them years before they need removal is what has most promise. 90 million to dig a whole in la for a building
I did buy new panels around 76€ per 100 Watt. Buts that's also their peak output.... Around that. These where only camping panels and I can't position them 100% ideal. Only get sun after 12:30. These inverters are also a price point. A good one is more expensive than my panels for around 300€. A friend of mine als did buy uses ones. The got around 50% peak of what stood on the back.
I worked for my great uncles' multi-million dollar metal recycling business between '80 and '85. The lead battery saga seemed different from my POV, if memory serves. I ran a lead/aluminum smelter when I was 19. I'd make 6 or 7 1650 lb ingots a day when the machine was running. I melted mountains of textile machine scrap. Waded in aluminum cans. It was a nasty mess but brutally effective. Batteries became a thorn in our side due to the forces that couldn't decide if we could recycle the damn things, or not. We had a stack about the size of a tractor trailer trailer, that basically sat in limbo for two years. Ended up polluting our ground because we couldn't move it on, etc... Cluster. The business is ongoing and within a decade of being 100 years old. They've probably recycled at least $2B in metals. I ran a cellulose insulation operation for two years before I started recycling metal. I know some recycling. A set of regs like batteries will likely help sort out the panel situ soon. The procedures may develop organically. A big key is simply to separate the different materials, AMAP, at reinstallation of worn out units, of course.
You know, there are types of mycelium that can absorb heavy metals. (I'm a wild mushroom forager, and have to be careful how many times I collect certain species because of the amount of heavy metals that are contained within). It might be worth your while, since you are in America, looking up the name 'Paul Stamets.' He's an American mycologist of world renown (probably the best in the business), and if you have issues with contaminated ground, he'd be an excellent source of advice. I have his best-selling book, 'Mycelium Running,' one of the best fungi books I have read, and it mentions several species that 'mop up' heavy metals such as Cadmium and Copper. Oyster mushrooms have been known to 'clean' engine oil spills in local authority vehicle yards. It may be possible that Mr Stamets already knows of a species that may help clean your ground, or is currently conducting research, or may even want to use your site for conducting new research. Worth a try. And it's certainly a great deal better to start finding ways to clean up your site 'now' (while you have time to investigate and pursue different options at your leisure) rather than face imposed clean-up costs a bit later should local environment agencies suddenly be forced by new government directives to check out & test the nation's recycling areas... Because that's going to happen as recycling sites become increasingly contaminated over time (unavoidable), and chemicals find their way onto neighbouring properties, into waterways, or accumulate to make staff sick.
Indian Mustard has also been shown effective for lead and cadmium. It obviously works only over a span of years (harvests) but it is far less destructive than ripping out all the soil and then trying to find a secure place for it.
Man you hit the nail on the head. Society's always trying to play catch up with the technology they make when it comes to recycling. And you definitely got it right about the recycle center smell. Me and my buddies used to dumpster dive for aluminum cans. Aluminum back in that part of the 90s I think was worth 45 cents a pound. And for a kid that wanted fireworks this wasn't a bad deal if there was no under the table labor work to do. Although sometimes the drunks would get pissed that you were rummaging through the trash. But that's where all the money was. The smell of soda and beer cans and of course a number of yellow jacket bees comes to my memory after reading your comment. Anyhow you have a good day.
2:55 high heat isn't the only option, there are several solvents for ethylene vinyl acetate which seems to be what holds the panel together once the frame is removed so mechanical separation seems entirely feasible. To be reused the component materials need to be melted anyway & the metals will separate from the silicon as they melt so can simply be skimmed from the melting pot as they surface or sink. The melting points are 962, 1084 & 1414 °C for silver, copper & silicon respectively which is a sufficiently broad range to largely separate them though there may be some alloying.
hmm are those solvents made from soon to be extinct fossil fuels also EVA is made from fossil fuels - no comments on your 16/9/22 vlog but solar panels are made with EVA - made from fossil fuels - Is ethylene-vinyl acetate good for the environment? "EVA is one of the least harmful synthetic materials. With optimal combustion, only CO2 and H2O are released. really only releases CO2 - CO2 is bad according to thermoeddonite greenies and how are you going to make them when they close down all fossil fuels - EVA is a copolymer: ethylene vinyl acetate that is usually produced from fossil raw materials such as oil or natural gas -The big green lie
Solar panels didn't drop 70% in price since 2010, they droped 70% in price between 2010 & 2013 and have remained flat since, look at the prices on solar websites using wayback machine, we haven't seen prices drop for 9 years.
In 2014, the price per Watt was $0.9. We're now at $0.2 per Watt. You can still find articles with headlines such as "Price of solar panels to drop to $1 by 2013, report forecasts". I bought my solar panels three years ago for around $0.3 per Watt.
@@upnorthandpersonal I look at bimble solar and see 2013 - 250W panel - £130 (0.52/W) & currently in 2022 400W panel - £210 (0.52/W). You can get more watts/$ if you buy older panels, but the 250W panel was top-ish of the line in 2013, it is a fair comparison.
@@arkatub And as I said, I can buy 445W panels for < $0.4/W in Europe, and well under that (< $0.3) if I buy them from China directly - and that's with the current global shortages. Even that site you quote has 550W Canadian Solar panels at < $0.5 and from a quick look at that site, they're overpriced on everything.
@@upnorthandpersonal that is a 2 meter double panel, it is not fair to compare, what site are you getting $0.4/W from? does the china price include import duty? also that would only be a 40% price reduction, starting from the 2013 price being £0.52/W, which I have shown.
Ha Ha Ha Man I got close to the same deal (10) REC 260 watt panels and a SMA 3kW Inverter for $500. Straight off the people roof to my truck. Craigslist. The highest I have seen is like 2.4kW, but the the inverter has data from 2014 when it was first installed and the original owner never seen 2.4kW so I'm cool with it. The 260 watt panels can only produce 260 watts in perfect lab conditions. Peace out Otis J!
I was hoping to see a comment like yours. Everything we manufacture today shold have appropriate end-of-live designed into it. Whether it's refurbishment or recycling or some other option, the manufacturer should not be able to sell a product that they themselves cannot take back and process. It's not just about the environment, resources are becoming more scarce and more difficult to dig out of the ground. Good reuse, recycling, refurbishment and remanufacturing should be the standard.
@@apkk5594 How ? We know what the costs a to recycle so the people that buy new pay a tax for the old ones so there is money to recycle.Same goes for import and it should be more expensive then redesign in a sustainable way
In the last few years in Australia any panels that still work are being bought up and shipped to Africa. Which is great to see them reused, but less chance if recycling at end of life. We also have a couple of recycling facilities that will collect once you have a palet of panels. Best scenario is that the recycling cost is incorporated in the purchase price.
You have got such a great voice, with such great delivery. I have found myself reading technology books with your voice in my head. The last time someone's voice worked that way in my head, was Carl Segan. Thank you for giving me to have fun reading more!!
What about refurbishing/reconditioning solar panels that aren't "damaged", just well used? Lots of people would love cheap(er) solar, and lots of EOL panels are still useful.
Because capitalism. Repairing or reusing is not good for business. It is better to destruct to make money. Capitalism is based on scarcity, not on plenty...
@@arnaudmosse6894 Exactly...you have hit the nail on the head here. Getting hold of cheap old panels is fantastic for those who want to play with solar, not so good for the corporates, as it is very difficult for them to make any money out of that.
THank you for this reminder. I thought we were recycling every bit of these panels. I am worried that some less developed countries that are seen as potentially attractive to set up big centers of solar energy production will become dumpsters for all these hazardous materials. As some comments before me suggested, we need better regulations that should include recycling as part of the development market for these materials. It is a pity if in 30 years or so we create environnemental distasters in place of using solar energy to save the environment.
My worry about recycling programs is that the government (local/state) simply outsources to a company who sends it overseas to deal with where labor much like life is cheap and disposable ... well until they decide they don't want it anymore like what happened to most of the plastic industries in the US. "Hey I'm paying money on my garbage bill for recycling... yay!!!" "Wait they simply crush it into cubes and send it a third world country?"
Here in Texas you pay an additional fee for buying a new car battery, for the cost of disposing of the old one. Why not charge a $25 fee when buying new panels to offset the cost to recycle?
regulators can make it compulsory for panel makers to properly recycle the panels they make for free. and then also allow the makers to charge buyers for the recycling costs upfront.
I have never heard of Elon talk about solar recycling as he thinks solar is "the way" of the future. He has talked about about battery recycling as a closed loop eventually but never talked about recycling panels. I wonder if Redwood Materials would R&D this problem to a solution...
Redwood Materials have their hands full with the recycle of Lithium Batteries. Although Elon funded SunRun there are many many more solar companies out there, just because Elon may be the richest the problem should not rest on him doing something.
Great video Matt! You brought up all the stake holders from manufacturers to governments to recyclers. I feel it starts with the manufacturer. If they make it too easy to dismantle and fix then it doesn't sell more panels.
Fossil fuels produce around 1000 times more pollution and landfill compared to solar panels over their full lifecycle for the equivalent energy. Coal alone produces 450 million tons of slag ash to landfill per year!
because solar panels consume a lot of fossil fuels in the mining / manufacture of panels - no fossil fuels no solar - google what he says they are made of then add the fuels used to mine and manufacture the silicon and metals - don't just play one side of the fence
@@jimlofts5433 Whatever is contructed to replace fossil fuels will be constructed using fossil fuel energy as that's currently the main energy source.. But Once the world in running on renewable energy, new renewables will be constructed using renewable energy! And yes, may still make things out of fossil fuels (like plastic), but stop burning fossil for energy!
This exact issue has been on my mind for so many years. Its so sad that recycling globally is driven mostly by profits. And its hard to deny that without some sort of profit, these recycling projects wont come to fruition. All of us globally, need to figure out how everyone can come out on top at the end of the day.
We have been pushed into using wind farms and solar panels when they are not economically viable, while most places ignore nuclear or even close plants. Government: ideas so good they have to be mandatory.
But if it’s not for profit then who’s gonna pay for it? I want these things to be recycled, but expecting people to just recycle because it’s good for the planet isn’t gonna work. It’s too expensive and no one wants to cover that without some sort of return.
@@crt5866 yea exactly my thoughts. Here’s what I think would help when it comes to future proofing recycling possibility when an item comes to its end of life cycle. All companies should and must design all their products around recyclability. Yes it would probably cost more in R&D but the benefits at the end, out weigh the initial costs. In turn, Recycling becomes cheaper which will then start using lesser hazardous chemicals/processes and what not to retrieve as much material as possible. Shortens recycling time as well in the process!
@@jaythelonelydriver another option I saw some people throwing out was that the company’s include recycling costs into the purchase of solar panels. But that will raise the cost of solar panels pushing people away and back to cheap fossil fuels. There’s just trade offs to all of this and it’s gonna take time to get a good system in place.
@@crt5866 If we need something done that isn't viable to be profit driven, the best answer usually ends up being either pump money into research to figure out methods to make it viable or have the government take the reins and allocate tax funding towards it. Same things happens with other common public services that would be a pain to privatize or would be overwhelmingly expensive/complex for the consumer in that scenario.
You should do a video covering the destructive and water intensive mining required to obtain the 'rare' metals used in solar panel and electric vehicle production.
One thing not mentioned in this video is getting the developers and manufacturers to design a solar PV panel that is recyclable more easily in the first place. Even if it ends up being more expensive to produce, it could be worth the price overall if it is easier and less costly to recycle safely.
@@KrustyKlown that‘s why he advocates subsidising, so that recycling practices that are slightly unprofitable, but much better for the environment, become competitive.
Recycling is kind of a scam. It was created by corporations to shift the responsibility to the customers and the government. We should be creating policies to encourage more compostable packaging
I am so glad to see this video. We are a solar energy manufacturer from China. I hope we can provide better production capacity and research and development for the world's green new energy, and make progress together to witness the beauty of the world!
One of my favorite tools for understanding a large number like 80M tons is to look at volume. Water is 1 ton per m^3. Assume 3 stories (12m), and you get a square 1.5 miles on a side. That is smaller than a single gigafactory. In other words, just build a dump.
Just wanted to say thanks for putting the sponsor ad at the END of the video. It's infuriating to pay for Premium and still get ads in the middle of videos. When it's at the end I let it play as appreciation.
Manufacturers should figure out new ways to make the panels that allows recycling to be much easier/cheaper. Manufacturers and recyclers should work together to figure this out.
Implementing a carbon tax is a great way to help push for this to happen. If manufacturers know that they’re going to have to pay 50% more for virgin materials then they have incentive to work with recyclers like you want. And it doesn’t matter that the recycled material costs 25% more because it’s still less expensive than the virgin material.
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet but that raises the price of solar so it's no longer competitive with other forms of electricity generation. The best method would be to tax petrol vehicles to fund a quarterly prize for the best breakthroughs in recycling technology.
Hi Matt. I've been enjoying your videos for a while now. I like the open-ended format of your videos. It seems to me that recycling should be a concern when products are produced. I know recycling considerations will increase production costs but recovering the materials at a product's end of life could be less expensive than producing new materials when they're designed to be recycled. Nuclear power plants are a good example. When the construction costs are calculated the cost of decommissioning is included. In the case of solar panels, the layers are fitted tight enough that water can't penetrate the assembly, but it makes the panels hard to recycle. These panels should have been produced with recycling in mind. Now that you've made me aware of this problem it's not hard to imagine a world where we design everything with recycling in mind. All products could have assembly methods and materials choices that allow for efficient separation. Whether its mechanical separation, a sustainable electrical system, or an environmentally considerate chemical process. I'm geeking out about the possibilities. Thank you for this one.
Another point would be if we REALLY care, to make products that last. Going through 4 5 6 products in the time that one could do perfectly fine is far better for everyone besides the seller.
I feel like companies should be considering what happens to their products after they're no longer useful. If their product becomes garbage, they should be held accountable. It's weird that we have to rely on 3rd parties to hopefully step up and find a way to take products apart.
Ah bingo, too bad the USofA’s politicians sold out long ago. Just think about all those throw away flashlight batteries. But Y’all just go ahead and keep drinking that tap water!
Coal companies don't have to consider what happens to their product, coal, after it's burned. This is a proposal to hold solar to a higher standard, but keep burning coal.
@@AlmightyDoubleHelix The sudden crop of articles demanding that we recycle our solar panels is emerging from the fossil fuel industry that doesn't recycle anything whatsoever, as a means to delay rollout by raising prices. "Solar panel pollution" is a numerically negligible phenomenon compared to any of a dozen varieties of fossil fuel pollution. We don't NEED to do any kind of recycling. This is a red herring. You can dump them on my front lawn, they're ugly but I DGAF as long as two generations from now we're not in the middle of a massive cascading biosphere collapse. A few kilograms of lead, you say? We still build roofs out of lead sheets. This is like the vaping FUD campaigns; Yes, you can't prove that vaping your entire life is going to be 100% safe, but very clearly vaping alleviates nearly all of the health issues with smoking; Public health demands we put vapes in as many hands as possible. Yet we've somehow allowed cigarette companies to use their mandated court settlement ad campaigns to scare people away from vapes and into smoking conventional cigarettes.
Looks to be a problem with equation 5 of $185 per kg. Silver is approx $640/kg, so solar cell would need to be 29% silver, which is doubtful. In the paper shown author missed a decimal point and used $120000/kg for AgCl.
If you use aluminum parabolic troughs as concentrators of solar rays, you could reduce the PV cells needed to maybe a strip, and this overall device would have a higher percentage of easily recycled components.
You'd just melt the panel. Far better, in that case, to heat water and use the steam to power generation. There's a channel of a guy who knocked up a parabolic reflector and water pipe very cheaply, and just propped it up against a pile of dirt. It was soon producing puffs of steam.
@@worldcomicsreview354 no, there are high temperature photovoltaics. But you could still heat a fluid, no question. It's just this way you increase the photovoltaic efficiency too.
Silicon PV efficiency drops _way_ off with heat. Parabolic reflectors are incredibly counterproductive not only because of heat but because of the much smaller area of insolation. As others have said, if you want to go with a reflector use it to heat something like water, oil or salt.
Solyndra, A Fremont, California based start-up backed by the government (Obama administration) tried to do the cell in a tube thing. Stole half a billion from the government (our tax dollars) and went belly up. The cells produced are no good and sell on ebay for little to nothing. They could not produce a cost effective product. Don't mean it can't be done but somebody had half a billion and the backing of the government I could not do it. That building now makes harddrives and is Seagate. I pass it everyday and think about the promise of something great and the failure.
Interesting ideas in the replies. I wonder if anyone has done a small scale "parabolic mirror to heat a boiler to propel a generator" type of thing. But I think a large scale system is already done.
Dutch company “Solarge” produces 100% recyclable PV-modules in their factory in Weert. These panels have a thermoplastic backsheet and front sheet which encapsulate the cells. The thermoplastic composite backsheet is delivered by the Dutch company Compoform & Giant Leap Composites!
That's the thing that gets me about recycling, it's has absolutely NOTHING to do with whether or not you can get materials out to use elsewhere but instead it's 100% about whether or not about whether it's economically viable to break something up and sell it to others. Recycling should be able not putting stuff in a landfill, not whether not a company can make money with it, yes I get it companies aren't charities they don't do something if they're not going to make money off it but you know who does do stuff without worrying about a profit? The government. So yeah local governments should line-item that into their budgets. I mean hell here in California there's an ewaste fee on TVs/monitors specifically because of it, and yeah it's costs like $6 for a TV that's easily as big as a solar panel, so I don't want to hear "it takes $25 to recycle a solar panel" nonsense, especially when recycling takes all of 2 minutes to rip off the aluminum and box and snip off the wires, then toss the rest of the panel into a grinder
It is good to keep this in perspective. Construction and demolition waste that goes to land fill in the US is way more than 80 million tons per YEAR. Recycling is very important but the lack of current economical solutions is no reason to slow down the deployment of solar panels. Thank you for the video.
Because tedlar and ethylene vynil acetate are very hard to recycle :) Remember, tedlar is a fluor based polymer used in airplanes and industrial kitchen because stuff does not glue to them, air and bacteria slides off. Very vapor proof.
Hi Matt, please please do a video on the latest solar tech for apartments. What are the latest options available for apartment owners? Thank you very much in advance.
Recycling to me is something that the governments around the world should be taking direct control over in both organizing and funding. It should be considered another public service like with infrastructure. If it's not directly profitable from a purely economic point of view, well, there are quite a few things that our tax dollars pay for that would fall under that categorization that we ultimately benefit from. Is sewage/waste treatment profitable enough to be a widescale privatized industry? There would be grave health and economic consequences if we didn't have that properly taken care of, but it's not like treatment companies directly see all the benefits from that upkeep in a monetary sense.
Governments rarely do things efficiently, and they can be extremely slow to adopt new technology. It would be better to have them contract it out (with actual competitive contracts). The way I would do it, though, would be to just tax the waste based on how bad it is for the environment, and companies will recycle when recycling costs less than that.
This is part of why I prefer solar concentrators to PV arrays for industrial solar plants. Reflectors can be made out of only polished aluminum, making them easier to recycle AND not requiring a lot of REEs to manufacture.
I want to pick up on that comment about high temperatures causing iron and copper to diffuse into the silicon. Iron, copper and gold are some of the worst impurities in silicon. Being present at even a few parts per billion can trash its electrical properties. Elemental silicon can be extracted from sand and silicon wafers are the purest material in the known universe, so recovering silicon from PV modules *at high purity* is very important.
Well, I agree that as we move forward the recycling will become. The one I am more concerned with is the recycling of Wind turbon blades. There is currently no way to recycle these. The result has seen the grow of land fills for thiskind of waste. They are not added to current dump sites because they not only cannot be recycled but will take multiple centuries to finally break down.
Spent $6K building my own 2KW off-grid system which powered my home for 17 years including a home-based business for 12 years of that 17-year span entirely off grid aside from line-of-sight cellular wifi connection for communications. Battery bank #1 (six 6-volt Rolls Surrette deep cycle wet-cell batteries) lasted 14 years. Replacement battery bank of eight 6-volt Rolls Surrette three years ago are still in service and all PV panels are still in service, the entire time keeping everything operating in home and office through each and every local coop grid-supplied power system outages (which were numerous and sometimes lasted for days during winter storms). No regrets and convinced it has been worth investment and worth future recycling cost impact too. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the local power coop wanted to charge $10K to run single-phase power to my remote, rural home without cost pay-back via billing deductions after installation. Too much for such undependable, expensive service.
I don't understand why panels that will likely still have over 75% of their original capacity are recycled. It seems to me there has to be an eager market for them. I imagine people who have some space left their yard would gladly pay $20 a piece for them to squeeze juice out of them for decades to come.
With solar panels running better at lower temperatures, have any manufacturers made a PV/thermal combined panel. You could extract heat from the panel and use that to pre-heat your hot water with a thermal store. When the store is hot you could divert the water through a finned heat exchanger and using a fan cool the water temperature.
Would love to see you review the phenomenon described in Shorting the Grid, a new book by Meredith Angwin. In the book, she observes that utility scale wind and solar do not reduce the use of fossil fuels. This is due to their intermittent nature, and that fossil plants have to ramp up and down all day to follow renewable production and human demand. Is it possible that we are focusing too much on the wrong technology? Nuclear energy works 24/7 and actually displaces fossil fuels. It’s a tough pill to swallow. I cried when I found out. Then I quit my job in solar and have been working on nuclear energy ever since.
From an engineering point of view that doesn't make much sense. Renewable requires what is called dispatchable energy sources to buffer the intermittent production of renewable AND the fluctuations in grid demand throughout the day, month, year...etc. Dispatchable energy is nothing new and is how the grid has been operating since it became as large scale as it is now. What has changed is the technologies allow us to more granularly adjust for fluctuations. However, don't be confused by this, the electrical grid itself is a giant electrical circuit that must be balanced, this has always been the case. The grid is a fragile thing that is constantly being regulated in different ways to maintain voltage, current distribution, and frequency. "In the book, she observes that utility scale wind and solar do not reduce the use of fossil fuels. " I'd have to see the exact wording she uses, as she seems to know her stuff, so I assume she didn't actually state that. If you have 100kW for your power requirements, if you were 100% fossil fuel then 100kW comes from fossil fuels... if you have 20% renewable, then 80kW come from fossil fuels. Even if you have to periodically increase energy output from fossil fuels for balancing, you're still operating at a net reduction of fossil fuels. There is also the matter that renewables can operate at an excess of current requirements. Currently this means that excess renewable energy is wasted, however, in some sense, even if they're not dispatchable, operating above requirements means they do sort of a virtual dispatching, where they can absorb increases in demand purely due to operating at an excess to begin with. Grid level storage tech is in the works as well. So, I'd say, currently renewables are indeed reducing fossil fuel usage, and new technologies as they come along will further reduce this fossil fuel usage. Nuclear is good, and I'm all for modern reactor designs, not for the old school 1960's light water pressure reactors. However, with that said, there is absolutely not logical reason to not use renewables. Meredith's book mostly seems to be about regulation of the grid stability by not just blindly trusting the grid operators, since capitalistic forces tend to favor short term profit in absence of long term foresight.
"do not reduce the use of fossil fuels." You also have to be careful with the statistics used for this conclusion. For example, electrical demand is increasing in the US, so even if we're reducing fossil fuel usage as a percentage, the absolute fossil fuel usage may be the same or even increase, depending on the level of demand increase you see overall.
I'm more inclined to read a book that gives me the pros and cons of all energy production methods and I will decide. Real life info, in California we, "The solar heads" are in a fight with the public utility companies because we are taking millions from their profits. They are selling less because we are buying less from them. Therefore they should be burning less fossil fuel, because they are selling millions of kWh's less then before solar. I give Nuclear the thumbs up I worked with the stuff in the Air Force. But when the rods melt down in a reactor or a car hit a utility pole. I like the that I will have power with my off-grid solar and lithium battery. I see no form of energy any better and we can use them all. Just some a little less (fossil fuel) and since Nuclear makes so much energy can we make the reactors smaller with more safety?
@@jimlofts5433 , renewables may be less convenient, but... they're renewables. Not sure why the detest for renewables. Though, yes, I would argue that nuclear should be expanded, though, we should do more modern designs. Despite the modern world running on energy, comparatively small amounts of funding are given towards it.
I think that recycling should be part of the R&D phase of everything being developed or made. The companies creating these fancy new products seem to be just focusing on what they can profit off the product and neglecting the complete life cycle of the product. Then we get into the situation we are in with the solar panels where the Government has to step in and use taxpayer dollars to incentivize manufacturers to recycle their stuff. It just seems like common sense to me, after all, we seem to keep repeating this situation. Maybe I am just crazy...
In the beginning the few can be exaggerated to say that will be the massive future. Often a good point to start, but not the actual future. Good insight as usual 👍.
Congratulations on a million subscribers!!!! Enjoying all these informative videos but just a dash of tech reviews would definitely be an icing on the cake !!!! Also, was hoping for a very long livestream!!! Maybe do it soon ??
I'm seriously surprised Oregon hasn't joined the list of states with solar panel EOL recycling plans! However, I've asked a few different employees at Portland General Electric if they have any robust recycling plans and they could not give me a straight answer. We really need to figure this out. This is a serious holdup for me when choosing solar over SMRs. Thanks for making a great video Matt!
Portland General Electric is a electric utility, much like Ford is not a recycling facility. Ford leaves the recycling to other companies, and PGE will also allow others to recycle the solar panes. Used solar panels can be in use for over 35 years! Mine are about that old now, and still in use to keep my RV battery full.
It can’t be less expensive to mine and refine the elements used in the panels, than to refine the material from shredded panels. There’s no way! The process just needs to be optimised and scaled up.
It would obviously become included in the cost to purchase, but the point is then they would be incentivized to make it easier and cheaper to recycle in order to sell cheaper panels and/or have higher profit margins.
I believe scientists in Japan have developed a method to break down plastic polymers into base chemical components that can be re-used, using bacteria. Not sure if it could apply here, but that's one thing I've learned that could be useful. I think I learned that from this channel, actually.
Oh the recycling is not a problem so far in my thoughts: * a nice table * if more, just use them as roof sheets, against rain and let still some light through, as for a car port, veranda, gardening for less sunlight plants ... that last will keep my panels for some time, as I have about 250 qm roof ... and until then, some minerals are so rare, it WILL be worth to recycle ... as I see here collected plastic bottles from water or milk
An $18 per panel subsidy sounds like too much. That would build an economy around recycling the panels that would go belly-up as soon as the subsidy dries up. That's enough that companies could essentially fake the harder parts of the recycling and turn a profit. That's not what we need.
Isn't recycling solar panels sort of mute to begin with? Aren't solar panels useful at like 80% efficiency for 100's and 100's of years? Sure it's not warrantied or at the best efficiency, but they still output a good bit for a LONG time. I mean sure recycle the broken ones, but a 100 watt panel that only outputs 80 watts isn't waste IMO. A broken panel sure, but not unbroken ones. You just need a slightly larger area to cover that 20% you lose. I mean we do need good recycling for those that are broken, but should we be recycling 40+ year old panels that still output 80% of the energy? Especially when it's costly to do so and best case seems you lose 10% of the materials. That best case seems worse than just losing 20% of the output.
The best way to encourage recycling of every product is not with subsidies, but with taxes. By taxing all virgin materials as they come out of the earth, the recycled alternative product becomes automatically more attractive in comparison. Of course, this can only happen if implemented globally or within a closed economy, which is why we need global taxation on all mining operations. With appropriate taxation of all materials coming from the earth, landfill volume could have a radical drop within a few years. No industry-specific regulations or technological prescriptions would be required. To answer the problem of loss of national control, the money could be returned directly to the nation of origin. This could only work if subsidies to the mining industries were prohibited.
My knee jerk reaction was soda bottle deposit. Add a $50 dollar deposit on the solar panel, then put that deposit in a very large savings account and invest it over 30 years. Now the cost of recovery is covered by 200%. And the customer gets his deposit money back. Now that $50 is a WAG, (Wild Arse Guess), but you can find the real number with fact based research.
So even if there used solar panels go to landfill. The size and weight of the panels might actually still be less then say if you had to de commission a coal plant or a nuclear plant which not only take more resources to break down but also take more energy to break down. I'd like to see what the actual lbs per kw/h of the life cycle would be
So the main takeaway is right now solar panels are too expensive to recycle and we hope that technology will save us from them ending up in a landfill and leaching into the ground. Meanwhile keep mounting them all over the place and add tons more. Sounds about normal.
One also has to consider the current manufacturing process. While it won’t apply to existing panels if one can change the processes and materials to make recycling easier, less toxic. Increasing output efficiency and lifespan could also have a significant impact on reducing waste in the first place. Let’s not forget all sources of power have their own unique challenges when it comes to maintains and end of life. It would be interesting to see the environmental impact of other sources of power production after 30 years or so
Oh, I hope the solar panel recycling gets better. Why is the US, so sucky at recycling? Germany has an amazing plastic recycling system too. Almost Every grocery store has this nifty machine that scans and crushes the plastic bottles.
Here the querstion is not if it is ECONOMICALLY viable, but ENERGETICALLY. If we calculate net production of kWhs of a panel over its lifespan vs. production and recycling energy consumption and we are in + numbers, than this is a task, that simply HAS TO be done. As at home. I am not calculating if it pays off to clean my bathtub after every use, this simply has to be done. I do not buy a new bathtub after every use - the same with aluminium and metals like copper - limited resources. So lets then impose a recycling fee and a ban for landfills to simply take such panels. Tha same is now with asbestos roof shingles in Europe - they have to be handed over to treatment facility at your cost and you need to prove it to your construction bureau officer.
That is why it's always better to spend a bit more on a high quality panel. Then spend more on a cheap one. This is a significant investment which you don't want ruined by cheap panels. The industry standard for degradation is about 80-82% over 25 years. Meaning your panels output should not drop below that over that period. However considering most mid-grade panels only have a 12 year product warranty. It does little good here if you have a 25 year performance warranty with that in mind. My advise is don't accept any panel which has a degradation less then 85%. Some are as high as 92% for the best panels like Panasonic, Silfab, QCells, SunPower. Which have 25 year performance and service warranties. N-Cells I recommend as are higher quality but you pay what you get here.
Interesting video! I installed lead-free REC Alpha Pure panels this summer. So regulators just need to ban lead in panels, and the heavy metal problem is gone.
To bridge the gap, the feds should create temporary storage facilities for retired PVs when they can be kept until it's economical to extract the valuable metals from the panels.
I think its a good thing California bought so many of the first generation of solar panels, because it helped start the whole industry and is the reason why costs are down today.
Recycling a myriad of solar panels seems like a nightmare compared to basic lead-acid battery recycling. Recycling costs could be baked-in on the front-end but that would require massive government and electric provider subsidies, so would probably kill a struggling technology. So we'll just kick that environmental nightmare down for the next generations and not talk about it. For reference, basic lead-acid battery recycling starts with grind the batteries. Skim the plastics, drain the liquid, and lead remains. Keeping lead away from workers, air, ground plus purifying the lead are critical steps that require good systems and 24/7 oversight.
There just needs to be a law where the owner of the solar panels need to test the solar panels before disposing, kinda like requirements to have odometers not be tampered with. So the owner tests the solar panels and they get rated, then they can be sold on a secondary market. There are dozens of applications I can think of where a solar panel even very inefficient can be used. For instance, I have a mobile chicken coup, twice a day I need a very small door to open, and then close. it is out in the field, so running electricity is not viable. If I could get a 100 watt solar panel that is only 20% efficient, that is plenty to keep a tiny battery charged enough. Another one I would do is create a roof over a small pond to prevent evaporation and then use whatever electricity is generated to run pumps to circulate the water around.
hope soon we find a way also to recycle the newcomers perovskite panels... 😬 btw, nice video Matt, there aren't much debate o videos talking about this near problem. 👍🏻
Another concern to consider is that many of the panels being installed recently are of poor quality and will never reach their expected service life. Had 30 panels installed 10 years ago and 10 have already failed.
Have had the recycling conversation with many end users. Many say they will be dead or retired by the time it is an issue. Another example of short term gain and kicking the can down the road. Spooky to me.
If you consider the labour cost of removing solar panels, just add a recycling/replacement levy. It would add maybe 5% per household. If you consider the cost of replacing panels, a recycling levy would be in the order of maybe 2% So much easier than tracing it to the manufacturer 30 years later.
We have 60 panels that we bought second hand. They still have so much life left in them. They only had a loss of 3-5% and we bought them for 33 cents on the dollar. (edited for grammar)
I've Decided that unless manufacturers build solar panels with a plan with exactly how they will be recycled when they pass their useful life, solar panel recycling will be a lot of hard work and failed startups that won't be viable until the cost of silicon and silver go through the roof.
Alright, Two key points Doing nothing will always be worse than doing something, recycling. End of life policies need to keep the cost of doing nothing higher than the cost of recycling in order to cause more capital to flow into researching improved, more efficient means of recycling more. The net value has got to be something incredible
Great video Matt. Thanks for shedding more light on this important topic (see what I did there?). Also, congratulations on 1 million subs! You’ve come a long way since I started watching your channel about four years ago!
Like a lot of things, an economic strategy would drive a lot more recycling. Unfortunately, just making landfills more expensive would be very unpopular. But if landfill cost 10x as much, people would pretty instantly be looking for ways to make recycling more efficient, and want longer lasting products.
To dump a mattress at our land field is $26. I got rid of two for $52. You know when you buy a new car you notice the model you bought? When I was driving home I noticed maybe 10 mattress's dump on the street. I did not notice till I was dealing with my mattress. If there is a cost for consumers, there will be more illegal dumping.
Hi Matt, long-time subscriber here....someone else has likely mentioned this - why wouldn't we add the new panel on top of the old (particularly when being added to massive ground-mounted arrays, where the added weight won't be a problem)?? - the new panels could be printed panels so they are light, or purpose built so they fit nicely over top of the existing frame, or...
Free air reaching the back of the panel helps keep them cool. Excess heat not only hurts output but it leads to premature degradation. Plus! why would you leave a valuable resource sitting in a field? That's revenue you could be putting towards offsetting the cost of your new array.
@@jimurrata6785 You could leave a gap between the panels as part of the design - think of the added labor way out in the field where this work is being done - (which could be more than a million panels) - then think of transporting millions of panels to where there is an effective recycling location - then think of the energy used to recycle more than a million panels - finally, with another 25 years the infrastructure to recycle will be much more mature and likely powered by clean energy, then the old panels really will be worth something
@@willm5814 The same truck delivering them from the factory has to go right back there anyhow.... You need access to the back of the panels to make the electrical connections. I'm not sure why you seem so set on abandoning a valuable resource and making the new install more difficult than it has to be. Generally one would want to maximize benefit and minimize difficulty.
@@jimurrata6785 I'm not set on this solution Jim...but I do think all ideas that have any merit at all, need to be thoroughly analyzed - quick introduction: I got interested in this stuff around 50 years ago, did my mechanical engineering thesis on wind power in 1981 - created my own off-grid island cottage 22 years ago - ran manufacturing operations for Procter and Gamble and Frito-Lay for 27 years and now own my own successful software company.......(I do have an idea about this stuff) - my concern is that the infrastructure to recycle a massive influx of panels really isn't in place yet. As I'm sure you know, recycling is a complicated thing, (just ask people that are trying to recover our plastic all over out little planet). If we can slow down the 'tsunami' of panels that are about to be sent to recycle, it would make a massive difference. It will give this technology time to mature and scale up. At this point the recycling process would be far less likely to be powered by oil and would be far more likely to efficiently extract all the desirable elements (IMO).
@@willm5814 I agree that recycling will probably improve with experience. But I'm of the mind that practice makes perfect (or at least.. better) If the old panels can't be reused as is, they could, and _would_ displace more *incredibly* dirty resource extraction. Let's not have perfection stand in the way of good enough. I have enough engineering blood in my veins to understand the attraction of 'ideal' but I think we need to start with improving both process and scale, and that won't happen without input.
Prefer the mono- crystalline panels myself ,they're working quite well on my RV however like most solar panels they have a very dark surface and radiates a lot of heat into the atmosphere.
For a fully longterm substainable planet,We need everything to take into account recycling by design, everything you ever buy or consume!!! Not just nit pick things like solar panel!
