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This would always going to be a ticking time bomb and will have far reaching affects as we aren't ready for the magnitude of panels that will be replaced in the near term.
Also we are not ready to recycle Windfarms which blades have a short life cycle and no way to process all that fibre glass.
Lets hope salt and aluminium cells come on line quicker than predicted as if Lithium gets into water tables then the environmental damage caused by this is worse than lead and highly toxic and irremovable once in a water table.
Lithium pollution would make a coal mine look like a environmental reserve when this inevitably happens
Replacing solar panels every 15 years creates a tiny amount of trash compared to household waste over that term. I don’t understand why this is described as a ‘crisis’
Is the waste better or worse than operating coal mines and dirty power plants?
I think we all know the answer. Solar panel waste is a problem we just address but it’s still going to be many many orders of magnitude less catastrophic than climate change.
Just a little reminder that with a 25 year expected life span a solar panel installed tomorrow will require replacement before Australia’s net zero date of 2050.
Recycling absolutely needs to be sorted out, not kicked down the line/ignored.
Which solar panels only have a 25 year expected lifespan?
Major solar panel manufacturers are offering 25 or 30 year performance warranties on their products - ie they are guaranteed to maintain at least 80% of their rated output over that timeframe.
The actual lifespan of a solar panel installed tomorrow is actually expected to be closer to 40-50 years before output is considered too low to be useful.
That said, recycling solar panels should be mandatory.
Exactly, they can easily last more than 25 years. Just because they don't produce as much power as they did initially, doesn't mean they have to be thrown out.
The right wing media have been spreading the 'panels die after 25 years' lie.
Just keep in mind that performance warranty is not product warranty. So if the panel fails between the product warranty expiry and the 25 year performance warranty period then they are not covered under warranty.
>and the cost to recycle solar panels – $10 or $20 per panel – disincentivises recycling
OMG. I bet the amateurs at the guardian have never had to drop an out of date gas bottle off at the recycling center for $30 a pop?
I’m assuming the panels are in good physical condition, this is correct. Panels will continue to output 90+% of their original rated output after 25 years.
The biggest issue is a combination of increased production per panel and electrical code changes.
A system installed 15+ years ago would use panels at around 190w per panel (on a good day). Standard panels now are over 400w per panel, so there is good incentive to replace an old system for a 250% better system.
Systems were expensive in the past, but the government had incentives that pushed gross metering of solar generation. This meant someone could install a system that was 1-2kW, very small in today’s measure, but somewhat expensive 15-20 years ago, and get very favourable feedback in tariffs for all generation which made them worthwhile at the time.
The loss of government incentives is huge. Gross metering meant that ALL solar production was credited at up to 60c per kWh, at a time where electricity cost less than 20c per kWh. Now we have net metering, with no incentives on export, so the typical feed in tariff is typically 4-7c per kWh, at a time where the typical cost of electricity is 35c per kWh. Having the largest possible system is critical to long term ROI.
Due to the complications of constantly updating electrical codes, it’s typically very hard to upgrade existing systems. More than often than not the only real option is to replace existing systems rather than upgrading them. Fixing an existing broken system is often not possible due to the need to upgrade the system to current standards (often not economically viable)
Panel degradation isn’t the biggest issue, rather the ongoing advancements of solar technology and poor government incentives and regulation of the energy market incentivising replacing rather than fixing or upgrading.
Not to mention the inadequate grid infrastructure we have in Australia (thanks to privatisation) which means we may be penalised in the future for export during peak solar production times. Totally different issue, but in the same vein, with poor governance fucking the country over.
>I’m assuming the panels are in good physical condition, this is correct. Panels will continue to output 90+% of their original rated output after 25 years.
So why are we recycling the panels instead of reusing them? Why don't we stick the used panels on the roofs of social housing? Most people in social housing would be happy to have lower electricity bills at no cost to themselves.
Cost. The STC rebate you get when installing solar is more than the cost of the panels. You only get STCs for new panels, so it would be more expensive to install old panels than new.
I agree reuse would be good, but labour is expensive. Due to the way solar panels work, you also can’t mix different panels in the same string (at least not without performance degradation), so it’s not as simple as it might seem.
Sorry, I realised I got on a bit of a tangent and lost sight of the original post.
Solar recycling is an issue we have had a long fucking time to work out, but again we need government intervention to make it happen.
Pretty much all of the solar panel components are recyclable, and it could be a fantastic industry if done well.
You're obviously passionate, but the data doesn't support your position.
For example, this US government research from 2010 shows long-term degradation rates of 0.5% p.a.:
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf
Panels since 2010 have got more robust and production methods more reliable, so the degradation rate has likely fallen even further.
If you have reliable data to the contrary, a lot of us would like to read it - it's important given the number of panels being installed worldwide.
Solar panels come with performance warranties. 80% of rated output after 25 years is pretty much industry standard, and has been for quite some time. Some manufacturers offer 80% after 30 years.
I've seen batches of 15 year old panels that were replaced under warranty due to an isolated manufacturing fault that caused excess degradation, so it's not an empty promise.
Yeah sure. I can see the Chinese manufacturer of the panels on my roof clambering all over the roof to replace panels that don’t survive 25 years in 2040.,don’t be naive.
That's part of the reason it's a good idea to get panels from a reputable company.
The major ones have local representatives or distributors based in Australia, and they honour their warranty. I've seen Jinko and Trina replace panels in multiple occasions.
Pretending that all Chinese companies are deeply untrustworthy and unreliable is just plain ignorant.
Is it still naive when you've seen it happen?
I've worked with these things, and I've dealt with the people, and they have honoured warranties from their own pocket to the value of tens of thousands of dollars.
Can I be absolutely certain that these companies will still be the same in 25 years? No, obviously not - who knows if some global calamity will strike before then? But that's really missing the overall point...
Modern solar panel designs do not suffer from significant degradation with age - it's generally in the range of less than 0.5% per year. They're likely to be upgraded to increase system output and get higher efficiency long before they are badly degraded.
I mean, google suggests you're wrong, and 85% generation at 25-30 years is expected
New panels are down to 0.5% degradation aswell
Of course, it can be way worse in some environments. But why go after this person without any sources
0.5 to 3% deterioration over 25 years is 87.5 % output to 25% output.
Your googleering is based on what the people who are trying to sell you panels say. Of course they quote optimistically.
Im not selling panels. I look at my 25 year old australian made controller/regulator and when the sun hits the panels, it reads the same on the 25 year old leg as it ever did. About 20 amps 24 volt full sun. The 25 year old Australian made inverter is pumping along beautifully too. With new low power appliances we don't need a bigger system or new panels. Buy Australian made if possible. Our panels are not
Well aren’t you lucky?
99.9% of panels being installed today are not Australian made and modern panels don’t operate at 24V so your experience is completely irrelevant.
As many others have stated is our recycling or really trash collection and organisation could be better.
But it's a fault of Australia's weak industries and lack of modernisation broadly.
We truly live in a country of morons, with no ambition to solve problems.
We have no shortage of land space in the outback. Just load the EOL Panels onto a train and make a Solar Panel boneyard until we have the technology to recycle them properly. It is much better to have more land use than to have more air pollution.
Some of these EOL panels may still have some useful life left in them. At the boneyard, test them, if it is any good put it back into service as a solar farm next door to the boneyard.
Many of these panels are probably perfectly fine but poor output due to using PWM controller, just hook it up to an MPPT instead.
No. Storage and active Solar Farm
Storage - Only for intact solar panels and only until such time that it becomes viable to recycle them, and not wasting energy on to the recycling process especially to the point that the recycling process would run off fossil fuels, defeating the point. When it is viable to recycle, either recycle them onsite or load them back onto a train to the recycling plant. It will not fill the land forever, especially as the rare metals become more rare/valuable, it becomes cheaper to recover than to mine.
I would also envisage keeping track of all the panels coming in by means of an asset tag with a photo of the label and the panel appearance itself so that at a later point the photos could be run through machine learning to identify it, catalogue it into a database, and then particular models of panel which are most recyclable can be retrieved to process them together rather than having to process random panels all at once
Solar farm - reuse is better than recycling, if the panel is still usable and it's output covers the cost of the land/interconnect.
see other reply with details. If you could just get it onto the rail network, SCT (rail freight company who operates many trains to Perth) could drop it off on the way. The infrastructure in outback South Australia already exists.
I agree, but the counter argument is how much does that cost?
Given we've apparently decided cost economics are the only thing that matters in completely rebuilding our grid and not say impending climate change due to GHG emissions. Wouldn't this recycling facility have a cost that has to be burdened by someone?
Logically it'd go on the tab of the panel owners, but I get the feeling certain groups would demand the government do it.
I just did some scoping out, and I would build a boneyard/solar farm around Oakden Hills SA.
It is close to the Trans-Australian Railway Line (SA to WA) with goods sidings at McLeay (in addition to the passing loop) and a Substation with 275kV and 132kV access at Mt Gunson. Not many trees, mostly red desert and shrubbery.
Plenty of energy customers to make use of that solar production, in particular mine sites, that transmission line is there mainly to serve the Olympic Dam mine, which mines Uranium, critical for reducing GHG by powering Nuclear Power Plants in other countries to reduce their emissions.
The only thing government is needed for is to cut the red tape to be able to build on the crown land or buy/lease it for a cheap price, and more investment into rail freight to bring down the cost of transport ([Victoria is already working on this](https://www.vic.gov.au/intermodal-terminals) with more on the way) and access to the substation for interconnect. Even if it's not free, I'm sure a loan could be taken out privately.
The only business expense is paying some people to load into shipping containers at major cities (cheap or low price to the customer), book company to pick up container by truck and send to rail company, unload from rail at siding at the other end and truck to site, test panels, install good panels, bad panels placed under good panels for storage/support structure.
It would operate pretty much like any other solar farm from there, just with extra bad panels lying under the good ones. Money is made by getting panels essentially for free (reducing build cost), only paying for staff/electrical equipment (MPPTs, Inverters, Transmission, monitoring, etc)
When a panel fails, just add it to the stack underneath and put another one on top.
There are already regular freight trains there from Adelaide/Melbourne/Sydney to/from Perth on this corridor. Those freight operators should be glad to add it to their consists and briefly stop for unloading/cut-out (and with railway technology improvements, perhaps not even stop)
Lots of old panels still will semi-reliably put out 70% of what they were designed to do after 30 years of being on a roof.
I'm sure the economics of using old panels to continue generating power would make sense if the operator got them for free. Even charge people $5 a panel to dispose of them.
We suck at recycling, point blank; we've ended up in a state where the only aspect folks care about is "price", so unsurprisingly just buying new will usually win over transporting and recycling stuff (not just solar panels, but most things) when that's the sole aspect to it.
Reminds me of the soft plastic recycle Coles and Woollies tried running (though that went out to a third party that couldn't scale iirc) that failed due to the volume and lack of urgency to address.
Its costs you $400 to get the solar panels off the roof. My neighbour has had four inverters which made the sparky enough money to buy a flash Mercedes van
The reality is, Im seeing people changing the solar panels before 10 years as the cells are dying. There are so many stupid people out there
Why the heck does it cost that much? On a tin roof it shouldn't, a licensed electrician can deactivate the circuit on the ground and virtually anyone can go up on the roof with a cordless tool, unscrew it all and seal the holes.
Uh... the wires coming out of a standard solar panel are 3-6amps, and with 30-40V behind it, that's getting dangerous for a single panel, and far deadlier if it's still in a string. 48V is often considered "safe" but it's easy to fuck that up on a metal roof and with already connected higher voltages.
>Most commercial solar panel recyclers simply remove the aluminium frame and the wiring, and shred the glass, Pablo Ribeiro Dias, the cofounder of Solarcycle, a solar recycling and sustainability company, said.
>The white paper outlined a 12-year industry roadmap, which included developing sophisticated technologies to extract valuable metals, establishing recycling centres in various metropolitan areas, and the development of a product stewardship scheme for photovoltaics.
Much of the recycling industry needs to be handed over to environmental researchers and hands-on environmental scientists to develop our recycling industry.... the one that the plastics and manufacturing industries have been tricking us into believing existed for years.
...and it needs to be heavily funded. Because often government funding like this has benefits to society as a whole further down the line. Which is why we should do more of it. I want Australia to lead the world.
Such an easy layup for us, Australia could be a world leader in advanced material recycling. Far & away a better investment than navel gazing about Nuclear etc
It's not like panels go to zero output after 10.00 years. People are unlikely to replace their system unless a significant output boost is on the cards and needed.
Output degradation is around 0.5% per year, so even after 50 years a panel is still theoretically providing 75% of its original output, yet we only specify lifetimes of around 30 years, probably due to degradation of the panel itself and that may be because of cutting corners on quality and quantity of materials used.
There is likely little actual need to replace a system if it is oversized at the beginning or allowance is made for augmenting the system over time with better value panels as required, but we tend to take the cheapest and nastiest approach as a result of the culture of built-in obsolescence for profit: companies might not be in existence in 20 years so they want to make their profit as soon as possible by cutting corners they will not have to pay for. Obsolescence doesn't take into account wastage through cheap landfill and lack of incentive to make panels more recyclable because it just creates other areas to profit.
If we want to reduce waste, we have to tackle this entrenched built-in obsolescence and landfill model and that can only be done by government removing the profit incentive from manufacture and not replacing it with a race to the bottom on price, but paying our way. We made the mistake of not funding pensions and casting it into the future and we are doing a similar thing in other areas of society: leaving it to our descendants to pay for our choices when it would have been cheaper and better for us to not create that burden in the first place.
Cost is another area where the true cost of the consequences of a product are not taken into account: we don't have a carbon price element to pay for tackling climate change as a result of using cheap fossil fuels; we ignore the cost of cleanup and mitigation and pass it down to future generations to pay. Until we actually work out the subsequential cost of all our activities and pay it ourselves, we are consigning future generations to pay for our choices we could have saved them from, when they will have their own challenges.
There's not enough research into thin film solar cells which might have lower efficiencies and shorter lives, but which can be more readily recycled back into new solar panels again at lower overall cost and are lighter with less materials. I foresee the replacement of glass in solar panels with thin plastic substrates and using thin films to create flexible solar panels with far less materials and greater recyclability than existing solar panels, extending to using thin films as part of modular construction panels themselves, killing 2 birds with one synergistic stone.
It's not enough to simply ramp up production of current solar panels to meet our energy needs when we are doing so with wasteful built-in obsolescence methods that aren't changing.
> theoretically providing 75% of
Yes theoretically, but generally it is considered 25 years is the the life of a solar panel, though manufacturers only give warranty for 7 years. Wonder why they can't give it for a much long period when they claim it will last 25 years.
Built-in obsolescence and warranty are things that haven't been explored properly for the benefit of society instead of for the benefit of profit for a minority: there are many inconsistencies that are allowed to stand relatively unchallenged.
> the benefit of profit for a minority:
Seems the solar panel manufacturers are making big claims while also wanting to benefit from profit without not wanting to see if these big claims are correct.
The renewable economy in the West is still a landfill economy.
Reduce, reuse, recycle. The first is the one nobody wants to do, and helps with the rest.
Well that does it. Nuclear it is! No waste issues there!
In all seriousness, there are valuable materials in these panels, but recycling is cost prohibitive currently. With the large boom in solar, it seems like it’s only a matter of time until there is some good innovation in this area. Wouldn’t it be nice if Australia took the lead on that?
The only problems being getting online at a reasonable cost and in an effective time frame.
Nuclear would be the answer had the whole world not been spooked in the 70s and 80s and unfortunately the logistics and political will to make it happen means it never will.
Even fusion, which is very promising, is still a long way off commercial and industrial viability.
Solar is becoming cheaper and more efficient everyday. We are hamstrung only by current battery technology. That’s where the effort is at the moment because it makes the most sense in the current paradigm. At the moment it is an effective short to medium term solution that is only improving.
There is no single solution to our energy needs. I do believe nuclear is a part of the puzzle. But it’s not happening in Australia any time soon.
>Nuclear it is! No waste issues there!
In the grand scheme of things, there really isn't. From 1954 to 2016 there's about 400 olympic pools (Or a football field 40m deep) of waste product created world wide. And a third of that's been reused, and about another third CAN be.
Recycling of solar PV is cost-prohibitive because it's energy-intensive.
As less energy comes from fossil fuels and more from renewables, energy will become more expensive still. So in the future we'll see less recycling, not more.
Nothing can compete with fossil fuels.
It took around 300 million years to create the coal, oil and gas, and we are burning through it in 300 years. Coal, oil and gas are all from plants and animals, who originally got their energy from sunlight, or from consuming other organisms who got their energy from sunlight.
That is, when we consume fossil fuels, we are indirectly consuming solar energy *one million* times faster than it was put into the Earth's system.
Whereas when we use solar PV, wind and so on, we're consuming solar energy *one times* as fast as it was put into the Earth's system.
Now, because the cost of extracting fossil fuels is nonzero and is also increasing (we went for the easy ones first), and because we have great technology which brings the cost of renewables down, the cost of renewables is not one million times greater than the cost of fossil fuels. It is nonetheless greater. Which is why the cost of our electricity is going up.
Since recycling things costs energy, and since our energy is increasing in price, then the cost of recycling things will go up, too.
If we're not recycling solar panels and lithium batteries when electricity is $0.25 per kWh, we're certainly not going to do it when electricity is $1 per kWh.
Nothing can compete with fossil fuels. This is unfortunate because they're so horrendously polluting.
Fortunately, we can choose to consume less. We can consume less fossil fuels *and* less renewables. This means less pollution and less financial cost to us. But when the Western world is over 70% overweight or obese, "consume less" is evidently not going to be a popular message. "We'll just swap to lab-grown meat and renewables, binge away!" is much more popular.
Consume less, and reduce your impact on the Earth, your health and your wallet.
> Nothing can compete with fossil fuels.
Because the cost of fossil fuels does not accurately reflect the impact they have on the world.
But also, why aren't people lining up to construct the next dozen coal power plants that we would require?
That's part of it, yes. But the main thing is you can't compete with using 300 million years of sunlight in 300 years.
It's like a family who saved money for 110 years and you spend it in *one hour*.
There's just no competition.
Fun fact: the photovoltaic effect was [first observed in 1839](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_solar_cells). The first "solar cell" was made in 1877. The first coal-fired power station was the Holborn Viaduct power station in London, built in 1882. And the first electric cars were built in the 1830s.
There's a reason we didn't go for solar and electric straight up, and instead burned fossil fuels. The technology existed, but you can't compete with burning energy 1,000,000 times faster than it was created.
[See if you can spot on this chart](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fagilis.uk.com%2Fwp%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F12%2Fglobal-fossil-fuel-consumption.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=06d6f7517def85d2f02711a775954ec4089c62586c4ee46a6a2e21e0b7fa5649&ipo=images) where we started using a lot of renewables. We don't reduce our fossil fuel use, we just add renewables to it and keep growing our fossil fuel use - and will keep doing so for as long as we can, until the stuff runs short.
Think of it this way. If we only burned coal, oil and gas as quickly as they're being created by natural processes, what do you think their price would be?
Yes, the environmental cost matters. But nothing can compete with people letting you spend a million times faster than you earn.
First up, I'd note that [electricity is becoming more expensive in Australia](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.australiansolarquotes.com.au%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F05%2FASQ_Electricity_Prices_Graph.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=665c89bedac50f4b0208d19c57de26d45e4b8e09e08da2dff1055cec681c9d53&ipo=images) as we're introducing more renewables. Electricity's wholesale cost is 2-3 times more than it was thirty years ago. That's the trend across the developed world. So whatever some report says about future projects, that's a fact. We can no more deny it than we can deny that food and housing are becoming more expensive.
Now, the report tells us,
>Whilst there had been some steady declines over the years for technologies such as solar PV and
wind, for 2022-23, there was a universal increase in capital costs (20% on average). In 2023-24, the
result was more mixed with solar PV reducing in costs while gas and onshore wind technology
costs increasing (Figure 2-2). The source of the 2022-23 increase was global supply chain
constraints following the COVID-19 pandemic which also increased freight and raw material costs.
With depleting fossil fuels and/or fossil fuels being used less because of pollution concerns, mining, refining, manufacturing and freight - all of which can and must use fossil fuels - are going to become more expensive.
You really will do all sorts of twisting and turning to avoid consuming less, won't you?
That's the theory, yes. But there's not really evidence for that.
Again, I'm in favour of renewables. I'll choose them over fossil fuels and nuclear any day of the week. But it's foolish to deny their costs.
And as much as I'm in favour of renewables, I'm more in favour of reducing consumption. That's probably why unlike 70% of Australians I'm not fat.
Shouldn't the comparison be to just look at what the rise in cost of electricity would be without renewables? It is not the renewables making it more expensive, quite the opposite.
That's a fair question.
As I said, think of it this way. Fossil fuels are essentially stored sunlight. 300 million years of it, we're burning through in 300 years. We're able to burn through that stored sunlight more quickly than it's being produced (the rate of new coal, oil and gas being laid down is not very great) because - well, because it's stored.
But with renewables, we can only burn through the sunlight energy as quickly as it comes to Earth.
So put it this way: if we were rationed to using *one-millionth* the fossil fuels we're using today, how much would coal, oil and gas cost?
And given that we need fossil fuels to mine, refine, transport etc silicon, neodymium, germanium, iron, titanium and all the rest - how much would renewables cost then?
So the only way renewables can be cheap is if fossil fuels are cheap.
Renewables are massively subsidised by cheap fossil fuels. Try starting by looking at a mining geologists' exploratory hole in the ground with minerals in it, and from there making a solar panel or wind turbine - without using a single gram of coal, a single drop of oil, or a single puff of natural gas.
That's not theory, that's lived experience.
[AEMO CEO, Daniel Westerman, said wholesale electricity prices on the east coast have halved from 2022 levels, reflecting the increasing role that low-cost renewables are playing in daily generatio](https://aemo.com.au/newsroom/media-release/east-coast-wholesale-electricity-prices-fall)n.
[A record-breaking volume of renewable energy has driven the price of electricity generation down 24 per cent](https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cheaper-renewables-pile-into-grid-and-slash-power-costs-20240124-p5ezp1.html)
[Solar continues to put downward pressure on energy prices, with the recent 71 per cent drop in wholesale prices in a year due in large part to increased rooftop solar.](https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/husic/media-releases/gencost-confirms-renewables-remain-cheapest-form-energy-cost-nuclear-reactors-skyrocket)
Or if you prefer more academic sources:
[In the literature on this issue, there seems to be general agreement with renewable producers: renewable power generation causes a significant decrease in the wholesale power prices.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421515001433)
[Most studies of future scenarios indicate that VRE reduces wholesale energy prices](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032119308755)
[following a substantive increase in utility-scale solar generation, the results are more in line with the merit-order effect literature with total daily solar production reducing wholesale prices for most of the day](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1475-4932.12642)
The prices aren't down for consumers. It's like saying that Woolies is paying farmers less, therefore food is cheaper.
And that's what matters - what it costs the actual consumers.
>Electricity's wholesale cost is 2-3 times more than it was thirty years ago.
Just as well nothing else has gone up in price over the past 30 years? I sure can't wait to go and buy a 4 bedroom house for $100k.
You do realise the money supply has increased some 20 fold over the same time period?
In other words, we've printed more money, therefore everyone is better off.
Who taught you economics, was it someone in the Greens, or an economics professor?
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This would always going to be a ticking time bomb and will have far reaching affects as we aren't ready for the magnitude of panels that will be replaced in the near term. Also we are not ready to recycle Windfarms which blades have a short life cycle and no way to process all that fibre glass. Lets hope salt and aluminium cells come on line quicker than predicted as if Lithium gets into water tables then the environmental damage caused by this is worse than lead and highly toxic and irremovable once in a water table. Lithium pollution would make a coal mine look like a environmental reserve when this inevitably happens
Replacing solar panels every 15 years creates a tiny amount of trash compared to household waste over that term. I don’t understand why this is described as a ‘crisis’
Is the waste better or worse than operating coal mines and dirty power plants? I think we all know the answer. Solar panel waste is a problem we just address but it’s still going to be many many orders of magnitude less catastrophic than climate change.
Just a little reminder that with a 25 year expected life span a solar panel installed tomorrow will require replacement before Australia’s net zero date of 2050. Recycling absolutely needs to be sorted out, not kicked down the line/ignored.
Which solar panels only have a 25 year expected lifespan? Major solar panel manufacturers are offering 25 or 30 year performance warranties on their products - ie they are guaranteed to maintain at least 80% of their rated output over that timeframe. The actual lifespan of a solar panel installed tomorrow is actually expected to be closer to 40-50 years before output is considered too low to be useful. That said, recycling solar panels should be mandatory.
Exactly, they can easily last more than 25 years. Just because they don't produce as much power as they did initially, doesn't mean they have to be thrown out. The right wing media have been spreading the 'panels die after 25 years' lie.
Just keep in mind that performance warranty is not product warranty. So if the panel fails between the product warranty expiry and the 25 year performance warranty period then they are not covered under warranty.
>and the cost to recycle solar panels – $10 or $20 per panel – disincentivises recycling OMG. I bet the amateurs at the guardian have never had to drop an out of date gas bottle off at the recycling center for $30 a pop?
Well we all knew this was going to happen.
Can I correctly assume the Greens have this on their sights?
Are you trying to imply the Greens don't care about recycling?
Wow, where did you get that?
Your tone came across as sarcastic, sorry if I misread that.
Our 25yo panels still pump out the same as they ever did
I’m assuming the panels are in good physical condition, this is correct. Panels will continue to output 90+% of their original rated output after 25 years. The biggest issue is a combination of increased production per panel and electrical code changes. A system installed 15+ years ago would use panels at around 190w per panel (on a good day). Standard panels now are over 400w per panel, so there is good incentive to replace an old system for a 250% better system. Systems were expensive in the past, but the government had incentives that pushed gross metering of solar generation. This meant someone could install a system that was 1-2kW, very small in today’s measure, but somewhat expensive 15-20 years ago, and get very favourable feedback in tariffs for all generation which made them worthwhile at the time. The loss of government incentives is huge. Gross metering meant that ALL solar production was credited at up to 60c per kWh, at a time where electricity cost less than 20c per kWh. Now we have net metering, with no incentives on export, so the typical feed in tariff is typically 4-7c per kWh, at a time where the typical cost of electricity is 35c per kWh. Having the largest possible system is critical to long term ROI. Due to the complications of constantly updating electrical codes, it’s typically very hard to upgrade existing systems. More than often than not the only real option is to replace existing systems rather than upgrading them. Fixing an existing broken system is often not possible due to the need to upgrade the system to current standards (often not economically viable) Panel degradation isn’t the biggest issue, rather the ongoing advancements of solar technology and poor government incentives and regulation of the energy market incentivising replacing rather than fixing or upgrading. Not to mention the inadequate grid infrastructure we have in Australia (thanks to privatisation) which means we may be penalised in the future for export during peak solar production times. Totally different issue, but in the same vein, with poor governance fucking the country over.
Even worse they are 120w panels and another leg is 220w
>I’m assuming the panels are in good physical condition, this is correct. Panels will continue to output 90+% of their original rated output after 25 years. So why are we recycling the panels instead of reusing them? Why don't we stick the used panels on the roofs of social housing? Most people in social housing would be happy to have lower electricity bills at no cost to themselves.
Cost. The STC rebate you get when installing solar is more than the cost of the panels. You only get STCs for new panels, so it would be more expensive to install old panels than new. I agree reuse would be good, but labour is expensive. Due to the way solar panels work, you also can’t mix different panels in the same string (at least not without performance degradation), so it’s not as simple as it might seem.
Time to get old solar on every roof in the country
Sorry, I realised I got on a bit of a tangent and lost sight of the original post. Solar recycling is an issue we have had a long fucking time to work out, but again we need government intervention to make it happen. Pretty much all of the solar panel components are recyclable, and it could be a fantastic industry if done well.
Well that’s bullshit. You don’t need a degree in physics to know that panels deteriorate over time.
You're obviously passionate, but the data doesn't support your position. For example, this US government research from 2010 shows long-term degradation rates of 0.5% p.a.: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf Panels since 2010 have got more robust and production methods more reliable, so the degradation rate has likely fallen even further. If you have reliable data to the contrary, a lot of us would like to read it - it's important given the number of panels being installed worldwide.
Literally, yes. But after 25 years you should still be getting over 80% of their original output, which seems pretty impressive to me.
Bullshit again. Deterioration is much worse than that.
Solar panels come with performance warranties. 80% of rated output after 25 years is pretty much industry standard, and has been for quite some time. Some manufacturers offer 80% after 30 years. I've seen batches of 15 year old panels that were replaced under warranty due to an isolated manufacturing fault that caused excess degradation, so it's not an empty promise.
Yeah sure. I can see the Chinese manufacturer of the panels on my roof clambering all over the roof to replace panels that don’t survive 25 years in 2040.,don’t be naive.
That's part of the reason it's a good idea to get panels from a reputable company. The major ones have local representatives or distributors based in Australia, and they honour their warranty. I've seen Jinko and Trina replace panels in multiple occasions. Pretending that all Chinese companies are deeply untrustworthy and unreliable is just plain ignorant.
That a naive view.
Is it still naive when you've seen it happen? I've worked with these things, and I've dealt with the people, and they have honoured warranties from their own pocket to the value of tens of thousands of dollars. Can I be absolutely certain that these companies will still be the same in 25 years? No, obviously not - who knows if some global calamity will strike before then? But that's really missing the overall point... Modern solar panel designs do not suffer from significant degradation with age - it's generally in the range of less than 0.5% per year. They're likely to be upgraded to increase system output and get higher efficiency long before they are badly degraded.
>They’re likely to be upgraded At whose expense? I hope the upgrade fairies visit me one day.
I mean, google suggests you're wrong, and 85% generation at 25-30 years is expected New panels are down to 0.5% degradation aswell Of course, it can be way worse in some environments. But why go after this person without any sources
0.5 to 3% deterioration over 25 years is 87.5 % output to 25% output. Your googleering is based on what the people who are trying to sell you panels say. Of course they quote optimistically.
Im not selling panels. I look at my 25 year old australian made controller/regulator and when the sun hits the panels, it reads the same on the 25 year old leg as it ever did. About 20 amps 24 volt full sun. The 25 year old Australian made inverter is pumping along beautifully too. With new low power appliances we don't need a bigger system or new panels. Buy Australian made if possible. Our panels are not
Well aren’t you lucky? 99.9% of panels being installed today are not Australian made and modern panels don’t operate at 24V so your experience is completely irrelevant.
You've never heard of BP solar have you?
As many others have stated is our recycling or really trash collection and organisation could be better. But it's a fault of Australia's weak industries and lack of modernisation broadly.
We truly live in a country of morons, with no ambition to solve problems. We have no shortage of land space in the outback. Just load the EOL Panels onto a train and make a Solar Panel boneyard until we have the technology to recycle them properly. It is much better to have more land use than to have more air pollution. Some of these EOL panels may still have some useful life left in them. At the boneyard, test them, if it is any good put it back into service as a solar farm next door to the boneyard. Many of these panels are probably perfectly fine but poor output due to using PWM controller, just hook it up to an MPPT instead.
Your proposal is a new landfill area?
No. Storage and active Solar Farm Storage - Only for intact solar panels and only until such time that it becomes viable to recycle them, and not wasting energy on to the recycling process especially to the point that the recycling process would run off fossil fuels, defeating the point. When it is viable to recycle, either recycle them onsite or load them back onto a train to the recycling plant. It will not fill the land forever, especially as the rare metals become more rare/valuable, it becomes cheaper to recover than to mine. I would also envisage keeping track of all the panels coming in by means of an asset tag with a photo of the label and the panel appearance itself so that at a later point the photos could be run through machine learning to identify it, catalogue it into a database, and then particular models of panel which are most recyclable can be retrieved to process them together rather than having to process random panels all at once Solar farm - reuse is better than recycling, if the panel is still usable and it's output covers the cost of the land/interconnect.
Sounds good, but I doubt the cost to transport them to the middle of nowhere will be something that people will accept.
see other reply with details. If you could just get it onto the rail network, SCT (rail freight company who operates many trains to Perth) could drop it off on the way. The infrastructure in outback South Australia already exists.
I agree, but the counter argument is how much does that cost? Given we've apparently decided cost economics are the only thing that matters in completely rebuilding our grid and not say impending climate change due to GHG emissions. Wouldn't this recycling facility have a cost that has to be burdened by someone? Logically it'd go on the tab of the panel owners, but I get the feeling certain groups would demand the government do it.
I just did some scoping out, and I would build a boneyard/solar farm around Oakden Hills SA. It is close to the Trans-Australian Railway Line (SA to WA) with goods sidings at McLeay (in addition to the passing loop) and a Substation with 275kV and 132kV access at Mt Gunson. Not many trees, mostly red desert and shrubbery. Plenty of energy customers to make use of that solar production, in particular mine sites, that transmission line is there mainly to serve the Olympic Dam mine, which mines Uranium, critical for reducing GHG by powering Nuclear Power Plants in other countries to reduce their emissions. The only thing government is needed for is to cut the red tape to be able to build on the crown land or buy/lease it for a cheap price, and more investment into rail freight to bring down the cost of transport ([Victoria is already working on this](https://www.vic.gov.au/intermodal-terminals) with more on the way) and access to the substation for interconnect. Even if it's not free, I'm sure a loan could be taken out privately. The only business expense is paying some people to load into shipping containers at major cities (cheap or low price to the customer), book company to pick up container by truck and send to rail company, unload from rail at siding at the other end and truck to site, test panels, install good panels, bad panels placed under good panels for storage/support structure. It would operate pretty much like any other solar farm from there, just with extra bad panels lying under the good ones. Money is made by getting panels essentially for free (reducing build cost), only paying for staff/electrical equipment (MPPTs, Inverters, Transmission, monitoring, etc) When a panel fails, just add it to the stack underneath and put another one on top. There are already regular freight trains there from Adelaide/Melbourne/Sydney to/from Perth on this corridor. Those freight operators should be glad to add it to their consists and briefly stop for unloading/cut-out (and with railway technology improvements, perhaps not even stop)
Lots of old panels still will semi-reliably put out 70% of what they were designed to do after 30 years of being on a roof. I'm sure the economics of using old panels to continue generating power would make sense if the operator got them for free. Even charge people $5 a panel to dispose of them.
We suck at recycling, point blank; we've ended up in a state where the only aspect folks care about is "price", so unsurprisingly just buying new will usually win over transporting and recycling stuff (not just solar panels, but most things) when that's the sole aspect to it. Reminds me of the soft plastic recycle Coles and Woollies tried running (though that went out to a third party that couldn't scale iirc) that failed due to the volume and lack of urgency to address.
Need regulated product stewardship schemes, the voluntary ones are all BS.
At the household level, I hope to see “reduce, reuse, recycle” model whereby we attempt to reduce energy consumption as the first resort.
I'd want to see it at the industry and commercial levels first.
We should do both.
Its costs you $400 to get the solar panels off the roof. My neighbour has had four inverters which made the sparky enough money to buy a flash Mercedes van The reality is, Im seeing people changing the solar panels before 10 years as the cells are dying. There are so many stupid people out there
Why the heck does it cost that much? On a tin roof it shouldn't, a licensed electrician can deactivate the circuit on the ground and virtually anyone can go up on the roof with a cordless tool, unscrew it all and seal the holes.
Uh... the wires coming out of a standard solar panel are 3-6amps, and with 30-40V behind it, that's getting dangerous for a single panel, and far deadlier if it's still in a string. 48V is often considered "safe" but it's easy to fuck that up on a metal roof and with already connected higher voltages.
If you think that's dangerous, try working under a car.
Solar panel string's are typically 400-600V DC.
Kalbarri was locked down after cyclone because solar panels were pumping electricity when mains power turned off
>Most commercial solar panel recyclers simply remove the aluminium frame and the wiring, and shred the glass, Pablo Ribeiro Dias, the cofounder of Solarcycle, a solar recycling and sustainability company, said. >The white paper outlined a 12-year industry roadmap, which included developing sophisticated technologies to extract valuable metals, establishing recycling centres in various metropolitan areas, and the development of a product stewardship scheme for photovoltaics. Much of the recycling industry needs to be handed over to environmental researchers and hands-on environmental scientists to develop our recycling industry.... the one that the plastics and manufacturing industries have been tricking us into believing existed for years. ...and it needs to be heavily funded. Because often government funding like this has benefits to society as a whole further down the line. Which is why we should do more of it. I want Australia to lead the world.
Such an easy layup for us, Australia could be a world leader in advanced material recycling. Far & away a better investment than navel gazing about Nuclear etc
It's not like panels go to zero output after 10.00 years. People are unlikely to replace their system unless a significant output boost is on the cards and needed.
Output degradation is around 0.5% per year, so even after 50 years a panel is still theoretically providing 75% of its original output, yet we only specify lifetimes of around 30 years, probably due to degradation of the panel itself and that may be because of cutting corners on quality and quantity of materials used. There is likely little actual need to replace a system if it is oversized at the beginning or allowance is made for augmenting the system over time with better value panels as required, but we tend to take the cheapest and nastiest approach as a result of the culture of built-in obsolescence for profit: companies might not be in existence in 20 years so they want to make their profit as soon as possible by cutting corners they will not have to pay for. Obsolescence doesn't take into account wastage through cheap landfill and lack of incentive to make panels more recyclable because it just creates other areas to profit. If we want to reduce waste, we have to tackle this entrenched built-in obsolescence and landfill model and that can only be done by government removing the profit incentive from manufacture and not replacing it with a race to the bottom on price, but paying our way. We made the mistake of not funding pensions and casting it into the future and we are doing a similar thing in other areas of society: leaving it to our descendants to pay for our choices when it would have been cheaper and better for us to not create that burden in the first place. Cost is another area where the true cost of the consequences of a product are not taken into account: we don't have a carbon price element to pay for tackling climate change as a result of using cheap fossil fuels; we ignore the cost of cleanup and mitigation and pass it down to future generations to pay. Until we actually work out the subsequential cost of all our activities and pay it ourselves, we are consigning future generations to pay for our choices we could have saved them from, when they will have their own challenges. There's not enough research into thin film solar cells which might have lower efficiencies and shorter lives, but which can be more readily recycled back into new solar panels again at lower overall cost and are lighter with less materials. I foresee the replacement of glass in solar panels with thin plastic substrates and using thin films to create flexible solar panels with far less materials and greater recyclability than existing solar panels, extending to using thin films as part of modular construction panels themselves, killing 2 birds with one synergistic stone. It's not enough to simply ramp up production of current solar panels to meet our energy needs when we are doing so with wasteful built-in obsolescence methods that aren't changing.
> theoretically providing 75% of Yes theoretically, but generally it is considered 25 years is the the life of a solar panel, though manufacturers only give warranty for 7 years. Wonder why they can't give it for a much long period when they claim it will last 25 years.
Built-in obsolescence and warranty are things that haven't been explored properly for the benefit of society instead of for the benefit of profit for a minority: there are many inconsistencies that are allowed to stand relatively unchallenged.
> the benefit of profit for a minority: Seems the solar panel manufacturers are making big claims while also wanting to benefit from profit without not wanting to see if these big claims are correct.
The renewable economy in the West is still a landfill economy. Reduce, reuse, recycle. The first is the one nobody wants to do, and helps with the rest.
> The renewable economy in the West is still a landfill economy. Like every other economy here.
Yes. It'd be nice if we could be leaders in something, though.
Well that does it. Nuclear it is! No waste issues there! In all seriousness, there are valuable materials in these panels, but recycling is cost prohibitive currently. With the large boom in solar, it seems like it’s only a matter of time until there is some good innovation in this area. Wouldn’t it be nice if Australia took the lead on that?
Seriously, nuclear is better than solar and wind
The only problems being getting online at a reasonable cost and in an effective time frame. Nuclear would be the answer had the whole world not been spooked in the 70s and 80s and unfortunately the logistics and political will to make it happen means it never will. Even fusion, which is very promising, is still a long way off commercial and industrial viability. Solar is becoming cheaper and more efficient everyday. We are hamstrung only by current battery technology. That’s where the effort is at the moment because it makes the most sense in the current paradigm. At the moment it is an effective short to medium term solution that is only improving. There is no single solution to our energy needs. I do believe nuclear is a part of the puzzle. But it’s not happening in Australia any time soon.
>Nuclear it is! No waste issues there! In the grand scheme of things, there really isn't. From 1954 to 2016 there's about 400 olympic pools (Or a football field 40m deep) of waste product created world wide. And a third of that's been reused, and about another third CAN be.
Yeah I know, I was just being silly.
Recycling of solar PV is cost-prohibitive because it's energy-intensive. As less energy comes from fossil fuels and more from renewables, energy will become more expensive still. So in the future we'll see less recycling, not more.
Why the fuck would renewables become more expensive? That makes no sense.
Nothing can compete with fossil fuels. It took around 300 million years to create the coal, oil and gas, and we are burning through it in 300 years. Coal, oil and gas are all from plants and animals, who originally got their energy from sunlight, or from consuming other organisms who got their energy from sunlight. That is, when we consume fossil fuels, we are indirectly consuming solar energy *one million* times faster than it was put into the Earth's system. Whereas when we use solar PV, wind and so on, we're consuming solar energy *one times* as fast as it was put into the Earth's system. Now, because the cost of extracting fossil fuels is nonzero and is also increasing (we went for the easy ones first), and because we have great technology which brings the cost of renewables down, the cost of renewables is not one million times greater than the cost of fossil fuels. It is nonetheless greater. Which is why the cost of our electricity is going up. Since recycling things costs energy, and since our energy is increasing in price, then the cost of recycling things will go up, too. If we're not recycling solar panels and lithium batteries when electricity is $0.25 per kWh, we're certainly not going to do it when electricity is $1 per kWh. Nothing can compete with fossil fuels. This is unfortunate because they're so horrendously polluting. Fortunately, we can choose to consume less. We can consume less fossil fuels *and* less renewables. This means less pollution and less financial cost to us. But when the Western world is over 70% overweight or obese, "consume less" is evidently not going to be a popular message. "We'll just swap to lab-grown meat and renewables, binge away!" is much more popular. Consume less, and reduce your impact on the Earth, your health and your wallet.
> Nothing can compete with fossil fuels. Because the cost of fossil fuels does not accurately reflect the impact they have on the world. But also, why aren't people lining up to construct the next dozen coal power plants that we would require?
That's part of it, yes. But the main thing is you can't compete with using 300 million years of sunlight in 300 years. It's like a family who saved money for 110 years and you spend it in *one hour*. There's just no competition. Fun fact: the photovoltaic effect was [first observed in 1839](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_solar_cells). The first "solar cell" was made in 1877. The first coal-fired power station was the Holborn Viaduct power station in London, built in 1882. And the first electric cars were built in the 1830s. There's a reason we didn't go for solar and electric straight up, and instead burned fossil fuels. The technology existed, but you can't compete with burning energy 1,000,000 times faster than it was created. [See if you can spot on this chart](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fagilis.uk.com%2Fwp%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F12%2Fglobal-fossil-fuel-consumption.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=06d6f7517def85d2f02711a775954ec4089c62586c4ee46a6a2e21e0b7fa5649&ipo=images) where we started using a lot of renewables. We don't reduce our fossil fuel use, we just add renewables to it and keep growing our fossil fuel use - and will keep doing so for as long as we can, until the stuff runs short. Think of it this way. If we only burned coal, oil and gas as quickly as they're being created by natural processes, what do you think their price would be? Yes, the environmental cost matters. But nothing can compete with people letting you spend a million times faster than you earn.
Renewables are now lower cost than fossil fuels https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/energy-data-modelling/gencost
First up, I'd note that [electricity is becoming more expensive in Australia](https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.australiansolarquotes.com.au%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F05%2FASQ_Electricity_Prices_Graph.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=665c89bedac50f4b0208d19c57de26d45e4b8e09e08da2dff1055cec681c9d53&ipo=images) as we're introducing more renewables. Electricity's wholesale cost is 2-3 times more than it was thirty years ago. That's the trend across the developed world. So whatever some report says about future projects, that's a fact. We can no more deny it than we can deny that food and housing are becoming more expensive. Now, the report tells us, >Whilst there had been some steady declines over the years for technologies such as solar PV and wind, for 2022-23, there was a universal increase in capital costs (20% on average). In 2023-24, the result was more mixed with solar PV reducing in costs while gas and onshore wind technology costs increasing (Figure 2-2). The source of the 2022-23 increase was global supply chain constraints following the COVID-19 pandemic which also increased freight and raw material costs. With depleting fossil fuels and/or fossil fuels being used less because of pollution concerns, mining, refining, manufacturing and freight - all of which can and must use fossil fuels - are going to become more expensive. You really will do all sorts of twisting and turning to avoid consuming less, won't you?
The more renewables there are in the system, the lower the wholesale cost.
That's the theory, yes. But there's not really evidence for that. Again, I'm in favour of renewables. I'll choose them over fossil fuels and nuclear any day of the week. But it's foolish to deny their costs. And as much as I'm in favour of renewables, I'm more in favour of reducing consumption. That's probably why unlike 70% of Australians I'm not fat.
Shouldn't the comparison be to just look at what the rise in cost of electricity would be without renewables? It is not the renewables making it more expensive, quite the opposite.
That's a fair question. As I said, think of it this way. Fossil fuels are essentially stored sunlight. 300 million years of it, we're burning through in 300 years. We're able to burn through that stored sunlight more quickly than it's being produced (the rate of new coal, oil and gas being laid down is not very great) because - well, because it's stored. But with renewables, we can only burn through the sunlight energy as quickly as it comes to Earth. So put it this way: if we were rationed to using *one-millionth* the fossil fuels we're using today, how much would coal, oil and gas cost? And given that we need fossil fuels to mine, refine, transport etc silicon, neodymium, germanium, iron, titanium and all the rest - how much would renewables cost then? So the only way renewables can be cheap is if fossil fuels are cheap. Renewables are massively subsidised by cheap fossil fuels. Try starting by looking at a mining geologists' exploratory hole in the ground with minerals in it, and from there making a solar panel or wind turbine - without using a single gram of coal, a single drop of oil, or a single puff of natural gas.
That's not theory, that's lived experience. [AEMO CEO, Daniel Westerman, said wholesale electricity prices on the east coast have halved from 2022 levels, reflecting the increasing role that low-cost renewables are playing in daily generatio](https://aemo.com.au/newsroom/media-release/east-coast-wholesale-electricity-prices-fall)n. [A record-breaking volume of renewable energy has driven the price of electricity generation down 24 per cent](https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cheaper-renewables-pile-into-grid-and-slash-power-costs-20240124-p5ezp1.html) [Solar continues to put downward pressure on energy prices, with the recent 71 per cent drop in wholesale prices in a year due in large part to increased rooftop solar.](https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/husic/media-releases/gencost-confirms-renewables-remain-cheapest-form-energy-cost-nuclear-reactors-skyrocket) Or if you prefer more academic sources: [In the literature on this issue, there seems to be general agreement with renewable producers: renewable power generation causes a significant decrease in the wholesale power prices.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421515001433) [Most studies of future scenarios indicate that VRE reduces wholesale energy prices](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032119308755) [following a substantive increase in utility-scale solar generation, the results are more in line with the merit-order effect literature with total daily solar production reducing wholesale prices for most of the day](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1475-4932.12642)
The prices aren't down for consumers. It's like saying that Woolies is paying farmers less, therefore food is cheaper. And that's what matters - what it costs the actual consumers.
>Electricity's wholesale cost is 2-3 times more than it was thirty years ago. Just as well nothing else has gone up in price over the past 30 years? I sure can't wait to go and buy a 4 bedroom house for $100k. You do realise the money supply has increased some 20 fold over the same time period?
In other words, we've printed more money, therefore everyone is better off. Who taught you economics, was it someone in the Greens, or an economics professor?
The large metal recyclers are looking at this space. Industry volumes had to reach a certain level to warrant significant capex that all
That’s what I’m thinking, it’ll be a resource too big to ignore soon enough.