11 ms·

They also last at least 25 years. There's no way that the waste from the panels is worse than 25 years of CO2 emissions.

worldsayshi 4y ago
My thought as well. CO2 gets dispersed in the atmosphere and is produced each time you burn fuel. Panels stay in place, the waste is produced several orders of magnitude less and you can collect it in the same form you produced it. It has to be so much better.
- __pache__ 4y ago
  I'm super confused, how is this better for the Earth? Aren't you using a gigantic amount of CO2 to make these panels that work intermittently, with giant batteries to help make them realiable? Why not just use 1 reliable power system, instead of having 1 unreliable backed up by 1 reliable?
  - Mesopropithecus 4y ago
    Not following, which 1 reliable power system do you mean?
    - __pache__ 4y ago
      Any. Solar/Wind, for example, are not reliable. Nuclear, for example, is reliable. Instead of having Solar/Wind with batteries and all this nonsense, along with Nuclear for its stability, just skip the nonsense and go straight to Nuclear. Solar/Wind are terrible...
      - derriz 4y ago
        You can no more rely on nuclear or coal generation for your electricity without back-up than you can on wind or solar. A nuclear plant in the US is off-line for 29 days a year on average according to the EIA. So you still need back-up for your "reliable" nuclear, unless you want people using candles for nearly a month a year. All generation technologies are intermittent - they're just intermittent in different ways.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        What is your argument...? Are you admitting "being intermittent is bad," while ignoring Solar is intermittent like 70% of the time vs 10% of the time for Nuclear? ...great argument? https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37252 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37252 doesn't seem like you interpreted this correctly, seems bad faith for sure. > A scheduled shutdown of a nuclear power plant is generally timed to coincide with the plant’s refueling cycle. Nuclear power plants typically refuel every 18 to 24 months, often during the fall and spring when electricity demand is lower. It's shut down every ~2 years, not "every year." > _During the past six years, average refueling outages have become shorter, decreasing from an average of 46 days in 2012 to 34 days in 2018._ They're getting better and better. So adjust the above 10% downtime number I gave, Nuclear is down ~3-5% of the time it sounds like. With improvements, this can probably get down to 1%. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh EDIT: not to mention this is an implementation problem. You can have multiple small reactors that never need maintenance where you just hot swap an old reactor for a new one. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-are-small-modular-reactors-smrs https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-are-small-modular-... The anti-science crowd is nuts on this stuff.. it's not _that hard..._
        derriz 4y ago
        I though my argument was clear - that you need back-up for nuclear power also? You accuse me of bad faith for quoting a number which includes both unscheduled and scheduled shutdowns by comparing with a number which only include the latter. And I don't even understand where this is supposed to be going because even if plants never had unscheduled stoppages, you'd still need back-up. But anyway, I find your tone overly aggressive. So it's unlikely that any discussion will be productive.
        goodpoint 4y ago
        Don't feed the trolls.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        > I though my argument was clear - that you need back-up for nuclear power also? Right, but who said otherwise? Your arguing against a straw man that doesn't exist, no one said: you never have to do maintenance on Nuclear. Clearly Nuclear is 100x more reliable than Solar/Wind, easily. > you'd still need back-up. who said otherwise......... who are you arguing against? not making sense... this isn't relevant to what I'm saying.. > But anyway, I find your tone overly aggressive. So it's unlikely that any discussion will be productive. fair enough! would appreciate you admitting you grossly misinterpreted the stats on the nuclear data you gave. seems bad faith. have a good one
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        There are roughly 40 million kgs of accessible, usable fissile material (U235 and Pu239) on Earth. Each kg produces 30-80TJ with maybe another 20 if you spend even more money to scavenge the last little bit via reprocessing. Newer reactors hold about 6 years of fuel and cycle some of it every couple of years. World energy consumption is approximately 550EJ. How are you proposing to fuel your reactors more than once?
        hardolaf 4y ago
        This number is based on existing mines (active and inactive) only. There's a lot more fissile material available than just the 40 Gg of usable fissile material. And that's assuming we only use U-235 and Pu-239. We also have viable LWR designs for Th-232 and are in the process of creating the first 5 Th-232 SMR test reactors at grid-scale right now.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        > This number is based on existing mines (active and inactive) only. There's a lot more fissile material available than just the 40 Gg of usable fissile material. And that's assuming we only use U-235 and Pu-239. That's all known and inferred accessible reserves. Not current mines. There are about 8-10 million tonnes of natural Uranium which has 0.5% extractable U235 (a bit more if you're willing to pay 10x as much for enrichment). There might be another big, high yield mine in Canada somewhere, but you probably want to check before putting down all our chips on it. U238 is not fissile. > We also have viable LWR designs for Th-232 and are in the process of creating the first 5 Th-232 SMR test reactors at grid-scale right now. So a technology that hasn't made it to the test bench, has no evidence as to its longevity or economics, probably requires more Beryllium than exists, and requires at least twice as much fissile material as is available for startup to breed fissile material from fertile thorium is your solution? One where the only proxy for how the extraction step might work is MOX reprocessed fuel which is more expensive than renewables on its own and releases more radiation under normal operation than Fukushima and TMI combined? Why are you suggesting diverting funds from a technology that works to build a completely different technology from your solution that destroys precious fissile material it needs to scale quickly then? Even in the most optimistic scenarios it will take decades to breed up a fresh load of U233 to double your fleet, and you will have to throw away all your multi billion dollar PWRs. Why not keep doing the thing that's provably working. That way if you solve the whole breeder thing then it will only take a few generations to breed enough fuel rather than hundreds.
  - TheSmiddy 4y ago
    The most reliable grids in the world are made up of a large number of small generators rather than a single source which when taken down takes down the entire grid. If you were to start a new city disconnected from the rest of society then a combination of wind, solar, hydro, and batteries is the cheapest and most reliable system to power that city.
    - __pache__ 4y ago
      > The most reliable grids in the world are made up of a large number of small generators rather than a single source which when taken down takes down the entire grid. who said to do otherwise ??? > If you were to start a new city disconnected from the rest of society then a combination of wind, solar, hydro, and batteries is the cheapest and most reliable system to power that city. No it'd be hydro/nuclear.
      - TheSmiddy 4y ago
        https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020 https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...
        __pache__ 4y ago
        no
KyeRussell 4y ago
Popular solar markets like Australia are filled with junky panels because we ended up in a race to the bottom price-wise. I can say with certainty that the panels bought by the average consumer aren’t lasting 25 years. In Western Australia we have the cheapest solar in the world. Just don’t ask how long your system will last for.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  What's the failure mode? Degradation is one thing, but are the interconnects between the embedded cells failing so they're outputting 0V? Or over-integration and the micro-inverter fails? Or?
  - nl 4y ago
    I'm in South Australia and I don't know anyone with significant panel failures. It's not uncommon for the inverter to fail at some point. I realize we aren't up to 25 years yet, but I know a bunch of people with solart systems over 10 years old now and they are mostly fine. I do know some people who replaced perfectly good panels because they could get higher efficiency panels than they could 10 years ago at a cost where it made sense.
    - shapefrog 4y ago
      Owners of factories and warehouses should hoover up the replaced perfectly good panels for cents on the dollar and blanket their roofs with effectively free electricity. There is no real need to care about the aesthetics for them.
__pache__ 4y ago
wait, why are CO2 emissions "bad?" it might even literally take 20-25 years to "pay off the CO2" used to make, deliver, and install the solar panels... to me it seems like our CO2 emissions are not bad and the effects on climate are very minor. this is playing out in real time as we make dire predictions that never seem to come to fruition. the world is ending in 12 years, said someone popular in ~2016. Well, halfway there, lady!
- Mistletoe 4y ago
  There’s nothing we could say to change your mind since you’ve already ignored all the science that exists.
  - __pache__ 4y ago
- aperson_hello 4y ago
  Making and installing solar panels doesn't cost anywhere that much CO2. Best numbers I see suggest payback in ~3 years assuming they're produced with coal power (and the numbers are better if they're produced with cleaner power, though electricity is fungible, so I'm not sure if that really makes sense to do). As a quick gut check, look at unsubsidized solar install costs - they're significantly lower than the cost of the electricity they generate in the 5-10 year range in almost all lower and middle latitude places... Also, idiots stating unscientific garbage (like the world ending in 2028) doesn't mean that there's no science behind it... Just that there was an idiot making up BS. Edit: it was a 2019 quote, not a 2016 quote. So we have all the way until 2031 until the world "ends"... Still an idiotic quote
  - __pache__ 4y ago
    > Making and installing solar panels doesn't cost anywhere that much CO2. ...source? Solar is unreliable, you _need_ another system, so you have to install 2 systems now. It _will_ be cheaper/less co2/etc.etc. to just install and use 1 system. The real solution to reducing overall CO2 is clearly Nuclear. Do you disagree with this?
Gibbon1 4y ago
I worry that I phat fingered a calc but estimating the mass of a solar panel vs the fuel needed to produce a similar amount of energy. Postulate is the energy inputs and price of commodities is strongly correlated with mass. Rough guess is over 30 years a 300W solar panel puts out 20,000 kwh. And weighs about 40lbs. 20,000kwh would require burning about 4000lbs of natural gas. So the weight ratio of the panel/nat gas is 1/100. That's an aggressive ratio. Another weight vs fuel calc. An F150 consumes it's weight in fuel every 20,000 miles.
newyankee 4y ago
I think a recent study showed 6 out of 11 panels or something maintained 80% of its original capacity after 30 years. As long as technological disruption does not deem replacement as a no brainer economically, I am sure quite a few panels may produce energy for 30 to 40 years.
- shapefrog 4y ago
  Assuming that my panels are say 50%/40%/30% as efficient in 20 years time, why not keep them plugged in anyway? Its not like they are an old car or something where the decrease in efficiency uses more energy / pumps out more emmisions. The only resource they are using is roof space.
  - xsmasher 4y ago
    As long as the inverter keeps working, you are right; you still get some (reduced) benefit for just letting them run. At some point the inverter (a separate box, usually inside the house) will fail and need to be replaced. At that point you'd have to balance the price of a new inverter vs. the expected return of energy from the panels.

worldsayshi 4y ago

My thought as well. CO2 gets dispersed in the atmosphere and is produced each time you burn fuel. Panels stay in place, the waste is produced several orders of magnitude less and you can collect it in the same form you produced it. It has to be so much better.

__pache__ 4y ago
I'm super confused, how is this better for the Earth? Aren't you using a gigantic amount of CO2 to make these panels that work intermittently, with giant batteries to help make them realiable? Why not just use 1 reliable power system, instead of having 1 unreliable backed up by 1 reliable?
- Mesopropithecus 4y ago
  Not following, which 1 reliable power system do you mean?
  - __pache__ 4y ago
    Any. Solar/Wind, for example, are not reliable. Nuclear, for example, is reliable. Instead of having Solar/Wind with batteries and all this nonsense, along with Nuclear for its stability, just skip the nonsense and go straight to Nuclear. Solar/Wind are terrible...
    - derriz 4y ago
      You can no more rely on nuclear or coal generation for your electricity without back-up than you can on wind or solar. A nuclear plant in the US is off-line for 29 days a year on average according to the EIA. So you still need back-up for your "reliable" nuclear, unless you want people using candles for nearly a month a year. All generation technologies are intermittent - they're just intermittent in different ways.
      - __pache__ 4y ago
        What is your argument...? Are you admitting "being intermittent is bad," while ignoring Solar is intermittent like 70% of the time vs 10% of the time for Nuclear? ...great argument? https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37252 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37252 doesn't seem like you interpreted this correctly, seems bad faith for sure. > A scheduled shutdown of a nuclear power plant is generally timed to coincide with the plant’s refueling cycle. Nuclear power plants typically refuel every 18 to 24 months, often during the fall and spring when electricity demand is lower. It's shut down every ~2 years, not "every year." > _During the past six years, average refueling outages have become shorter, decreasing from an average of 46 days in 2012 to 34 days in 2018._ They're getting better and better. So adjust the above 10% downtime number I gave, Nuclear is down ~3-5% of the time it sounds like. With improvements, this can probably get down to 1%. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh EDIT: not to mention this is an implementation problem. You can have multiple small reactors that never need maintenance where you just hot swap an old reactor for a new one. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-are-small-modular-reactors-smrs https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-are-small-modular-... The anti-science crowd is nuts on this stuff.. it's not _that hard..._
        derriz 4y ago
        I though my argument was clear - that you need back-up for nuclear power also? You accuse me of bad faith for quoting a number which includes both unscheduled and scheduled shutdowns by comparing with a number which only include the latter. And I don't even understand where this is supposed to be going because even if plants never had unscheduled stoppages, you'd still need back-up. But anyway, I find your tone overly aggressive. So it's unlikely that any discussion will be productive.
        goodpoint 4y ago
        Don't feed the trolls.
        __pache__ 4y ago
        > I though my argument was clear - that you need back-up for nuclear power also? Right, but who said otherwise? Your arguing against a straw man that doesn't exist, no one said: you never have to do maintenance on Nuclear. Clearly Nuclear is 100x more reliable than Solar/Wind, easily. > you'd still need back-up. who said otherwise......... who are you arguing against? not making sense... this isn't relevant to what I'm saying.. > But anyway, I find your tone overly aggressive. So it's unlikely that any discussion will be productive. fair enough! would appreciate you admitting you grossly misinterpreted the stats on the nuclear data you gave. seems bad faith. have a good one
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      There are roughly 40 million kgs of accessible, usable fissile material (U235 and Pu239) on Earth. Each kg produces 30-80TJ with maybe another 20 if you spend even more money to scavenge the last little bit via reprocessing. Newer reactors hold about 6 years of fuel and cycle some of it every couple of years. World energy consumption is approximately 550EJ. How are you proposing to fuel your reactors more than once?
      - hardolaf 4y ago
        This number is based on existing mines (active and inactive) only. There's a lot more fissile material available than just the 40 Gg of usable fissile material. And that's assuming we only use U-235 and Pu-239. We also have viable LWR designs for Th-232 and are in the process of creating the first 5 Th-232 SMR test reactors at grid-scale right now.
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
        > This number is based on existing mines (active and inactive) only. There's a lot more fissile material available than just the 40 Gg of usable fissile material. And that's assuming we only use U-235 and Pu-239. That's all known and inferred accessible reserves. Not current mines. There are about 8-10 million tonnes of natural Uranium which has 0.5% extractable U235 (a bit more if you're willing to pay 10x as much for enrichment). There might be another big, high yield mine in Canada somewhere, but you probably want to check before putting down all our chips on it. U238 is not fissile. > We also have viable LWR designs for Th-232 and are in the process of creating the first 5 Th-232 SMR test reactors at grid-scale right now. So a technology that hasn't made it to the test bench, has no evidence as to its longevity or economics, probably requires more Beryllium than exists, and requires at least twice as much fissile material as is available for startup to breed fissile material from fertile thorium is your solution? One where the only proxy for how the extraction step might work is MOX reprocessed fuel which is more expensive than renewables on its own and releases more radiation under normal operation than Fukushima and TMI combined? Why are you suggesting diverting funds from a technology that works to build a completely different technology from your solution that destroys precious fissile material it needs to scale quickly then? Even in the most optimistic scenarios it will take decades to breed up a fresh load of U233 to double your fleet, and you will have to throw away all your multi billion dollar PWRs. Why not keep doing the thing that's provably working. That way if you solve the whole breeder thing then it will only take a few generations to breed enough fuel rather than hundreds.
- TheSmiddy 4y ago
  The most reliable grids in the world are made up of a large number of small generators rather than a single source which when taken down takes down the entire grid. If you were to start a new city disconnected from the rest of society then a combination of wind, solar, hydro, and batteries is the cheapest and most reliable system to power that city.
  - __pache__ 4y ago
    > The most reliable grids in the world are made up of a large number of small generators rather than a single source which when taken down takes down the entire grid. who said to do otherwise ??? > If you were to start a new city disconnected from the rest of society then a combination of wind, solar, hydro, and batteries is the cheapest and most reliable system to power that city. No it'd be hydro/nuclear.
    - TheSmiddy 4y ago
      https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020 https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...
      - __pache__ 4y ago
        no

KyeRussell 4y ago

Popular solar markets like Australia are filled with junky panels because we ended up in a race to the bottom price-wise. I can say with certainty that the panels bought by the average consumer aren’t lasting 25 years. In Western Australia we have the cheapest solar in the world. Just don’t ask how long your system will last for.

Scoundreller 4y ago
What's the failure mode? Degradation is one thing, but are the interconnects between the embedded cells failing so they're outputting 0V? Or over-integration and the micro-inverter fails? Or?
- nl 4y ago
  I'm in South Australia and I don't know anyone with significant panel failures. It's not uncommon for the inverter to fail at some point. I realize we aren't up to 25 years yet, but I know a bunch of people with solart systems over 10 years old now and they are mostly fine. I do know some people who replaced perfectly good panels because they could get higher efficiency panels than they could 10 years ago at a cost where it made sense.
  - shapefrog 4y ago
    Owners of factories and warehouses should hoover up the replaced perfectly good panels for cents on the dollar and blanket their roofs with effectively free electricity. There is no real need to care about the aesthetics for them.

__pache__ 4y ago

wait, why are CO2 emissions "bad?" it might even literally take 20-25 years to "pay off the CO2" used to make, deliver, and install the solar panels... to me it seems like our CO2 emissions are not bad and the effects on climate are very minor. this is playing out in real time as we make dire predictions that never seem to come to fruition. the world is ending in 12 years, said someone popular in ~2016. Well, halfway there, lady!

Mistletoe 4y ago
There’s nothing we could say to change your mind since you’ve already ignored all the science that exists.
- __pache__ 4y ago
aperson_hello 4y ago
Making and installing solar panels doesn't cost anywhere that much CO2. Best numbers I see suggest payback in ~3 years assuming they're produced with coal power (and the numbers are better if they're produced with cleaner power, though electricity is fungible, so I'm not sure if that really makes sense to do). As a quick gut check, look at unsubsidized solar install costs - they're significantly lower than the cost of the electricity they generate in the 5-10 year range in almost all lower and middle latitude places... Also, idiots stating unscientific garbage (like the world ending in 2028) doesn't mean that there's no science behind it... Just that there was an idiot making up BS. Edit: it was a 2019 quote, not a 2016 quote. So we have all the way until 2031 until the world "ends"... Still an idiotic quote
- __pache__ 4y ago
  > Making and installing solar panels doesn't cost anywhere that much CO2. ...source? Solar is unreliable, you _need_ another system, so you have to install 2 systems now. It _will_ be cheaper/less co2/etc.etc. to just install and use 1 system. The real solution to reducing overall CO2 is clearly Nuclear. Do you disagree with this?

Gibbon1 4y ago

I worry that I phat fingered a calc but estimating the mass of a solar panel vs the fuel needed to produce a similar amount of energy. Postulate is the energy inputs and price of commodities is strongly correlated with mass. Rough guess is over 30 years a 300W solar panel puts out 20,000 kwh. And weighs about 40lbs. 20,000kwh would require burning about 4000lbs of natural gas. So the weight ratio of the panel/nat gas is 1/100. That's an aggressive ratio. Another weight vs fuel calc. An F150 consumes it's weight in fuel every 20,000 miles.

newyankee 4y ago

I think a recent study showed 6 out of 11 panels or something maintained 80% of its original capacity after 30 years. As long as technological disruption does not deem replacement as a no brainer economically, I am sure quite a few panels may produce energy for 30 to 40 years.

shapefrog 4y ago
Assuming that my panels are say 50%/40%/30% as efficient in 20 years time, why not keep them plugged in anyway? Its not like they are an old car or something where the decrease in efficiency uses more energy / pumps out more emmisions. The only resource they are using is roof space.
- xsmasher 4y ago
  As long as the inverter keeps working, you are right; you still get some (reduced) benefit for just letting them run. At some point the inverter (a separate box, usually inside the house) will fail and need to be replaced. At that point you'd have to balance the price of a new inverter vs. the expected return of energy from the panels.