4 ms·

They can be designed to appear like stone, wood, concrete or brick, so can be hidden on walls and floors, as well as on roofs, Somebody wanna run the numbers a

by causi 4y ago

They can be designed to appear like stone, wood, concrete or brick, so can be hidden on walls and floors, as well as on roofs, Somebody wanna run the numbers and tell me how many decades it will take for one of these things to offset its manufacturing & installation carbon footprint? I'm betting it's a while.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bryanlarsen 4y ago
The answer for traditional solar panels is about 2 months IIRC. The answer for these should be significantly less, because you should only count the delta between solar tiles and non-solar tiles rather than the entire footprint.
- teruakohatu 4y ago
  > The answer for traditional solar panels is about 2 months IIRC. Do you have a citation for that? A quick Google said normal panels take three years.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    No, I couldn't find it again, it was just from memory. But a check on your number shows that it came from 2004. The price of solar panels has dropped ~90% since 2004, and price is fairly well correlated with carbon footprint.
    - wkat4242 4y ago
      > The price of solar panels has dropped ~90% since 2004, and price is fairly well correlated with carbon footprint. Part of that low price was China flooding the market with cheap subsidized cells in other to take the competition out of business. Similar to the way Amazon puts the prices (of products and prime) up in markets where they've already eliminated most of the competition. I don't think actual energy footprint has reduced by that much, I'm sure it has a bit though.
  - comboy 4y ago
    The carbon footprint idea seems flawed to me. It always just depends how far you look. There are machines making machines making machines and so on, the chain is really long and those early machines in the chain, which may have been necessary to create given product, may not even exist anymore. They might have existed before the product was even invented. Note that the whole idea was mostly popularized by BP [1][2]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint 2. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oi...
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Frauenhofer pv report says 4 months to 3 years EPBT depending on travel distance, grid losses (both in manufacture and generation) and install location. If you install on a single axis tracker in Chile and use the energy DC then 2 months is believable. These lose about half the light, so up to six years assuming the decorative tile part is negligibly higher carbon than what would go there anyway.
- ant6n 4y ago
  >> …only count delta… Not if replacing tiles that would otherwise not be replaced.
  - jkmcf 4y ago
    I'm waiting for one good hail storm to finish off my roof as far as the insurance company cares.
  - jahewson 4y ago
    Yeah terracotta tiles last over 100 years so it’s well worth factoring in.
ggm 4y ago
This "but the energy cost is net negative against keeping what we have" is an odd basis of reasoning. Some days I think its just a modern variant of "we should never have come down out of the trees" thinking. No development can get away from a positive energy burden against the sunk cost of history. For active (coal burning power) vs passive (solar) the net energy cost is probably always good now: the cost of deploying solar has dropped enough that the sunk cost of the coal burner is now exceeded by the future lifetime upside of the PV, even given its carbon debt to make. You're in a niche, arguing that scavenging existing clay tiles and keeping what you have is net better carbon output (bearing in mind your power has to be generated, and transmitted) than replacing the tiles with solar tiles. Thats different to 'replace coal burner with solar' but it can be calculated. TL;DR you're asserting you think its worserer. I think its an interesting question, I don't actually think it is, but if it was, the question doesn't terminate in the sunk cost of the existing tiles, its the sunk cost AND FUTURE BURDEN of the coal burner you don't use. It's not just the production cost burden of the solar PV tiles, you have to remember to include the CO burden from the energy source you don't displace by making it locally.
jnsaff2 4y ago
The last I looked (2019-ish) the carbon footprint offset for the whole installation I was planning was 1.9 years. The lifetime is ~20-25 years. I tried to include everything, panels, inverters, aluminium rails, transport etc. Things have evolved significantly so my guess is that this has come down a lot.

by causi 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bryanlarsen 4y ago

The answer for traditional solar panels is about 2 months IIRC. The answer for these should be significantly less, because you should only count the delta between solar tiles and non-solar tiles rather than the entire footprint.

teruakohatu 4y ago
> The answer for traditional solar panels is about 2 months IIRC. Do you have a citation for that? A quick Google said normal panels take three years.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  No, I couldn't find it again, it was just from memory. But a check on your number shows that it came from 2004. The price of solar panels has dropped ~90% since 2004, and price is fairly well correlated with carbon footprint.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    > The price of solar panels has dropped ~90% since 2004, and price is fairly well correlated with carbon footprint. Part of that low price was China flooding the market with cheap subsidized cells in other to take the competition out of business. Similar to the way Amazon puts the prices (of products and prime) up in markets where they've already eliminated most of the competition. I don't think actual energy footprint has reduced by that much, I'm sure it has a bit though.
- comboy 4y ago
  The carbon footprint idea seems flawed to me. It always just depends how far you look. There are machines making machines making machines and so on, the chain is really long and those early machines in the chain, which may have been necessary to create given product, may not even exist anymore. They might have existed before the product was even invented. Note that the whole idea was mostly popularized by BP [1][2]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint 2. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oi...
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Frauenhofer pv report says 4 months to 3 years EPBT depending on travel distance, grid losses (both in manufacture and generation) and install location. If you install on a single axis tracker in Chile and use the energy DC then 2 months is believable. These lose about half the light, so up to six years assuming the decorative tile part is negligibly higher carbon than what would go there anyway.
ant6n 4y ago
>> …only count delta… Not if replacing tiles that would otherwise not be replaced.
- jkmcf 4y ago
  I'm waiting for one good hail storm to finish off my roof as far as the insurance company cares.
- jahewson 4y ago
  Yeah terracotta tiles last over 100 years so it’s well worth factoring in.

ggm 4y ago

This "but the energy cost is net negative against keeping what we have" is an odd basis of reasoning. Some days I think its just a modern variant of "we should never have come down out of the trees" thinking. No development can get away from a positive energy burden against the sunk cost of history. For active (coal burning power) vs passive (solar) the net energy cost is probably always good now: the cost of deploying solar has dropped enough that the sunk cost of the coal burner is now exceeded by the future lifetime upside of the PV, even given its carbon debt to make. You're in a niche, arguing that scavenging existing clay tiles and keeping what you have is net better carbon output (bearing in mind your power has to be generated, and transmitted) than replacing the tiles with solar tiles. Thats different to 'replace coal burner with solar' but it can be calculated. TL;DR you're asserting you think its worserer. I think its an interesting question, I don't actually think it is, but if it was, the question doesn't terminate in the sunk cost of the existing tiles, its the sunk cost AND FUTURE BURDEN of the coal burner you don't use. It's not just the production cost burden of the solar PV tiles, you have to remember to include the CO burden from the energy source you don't displace by making it locally.

jnsaff2 4y ago

The last I looked (2019-ish) the carbon footprint offset for the whole installation I was planning was 1.9 years. The lifetime is ~20-25 years. I tried to include everything, panels, inverters, aluminium rails, transport etc. Things have evolved significantly so my guess is that this has come down a lot.