Hail Damaged Solar Panels Will Likely End Up In Landfill
The panels of a solar farm in Scottsbluff, Nebraska (pictured), that were destroyed in a hailstorm last week will likely be taken to a landfill
There’s no way to recycle a solar panel to produce another one, and it’s not economical to recover minerals from them.
The extent of the damage at a Scottsbluff solar farm that was heavily damaged in a hailstorm last week remains unknown.
“They’re still working through that process,” Grant Otten, spokesperson for the Nebraska Public Power District, which buys electricity from the solar farm, told Cowboy State Daily.
Cowboy State Daily reached out to Sol Systems, which financed and developed the project, but didn’t receive a response.
While some of the solar panels at the farm may be salvageable, as well as other equipment, it’s likely many of the panels will need to be discarded.
Even if solar panels aren’t destroyed by weather events, they gradually stop producing much electricity and reach the end of their lives in 20 to 30 years.
By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency estimates that 78 million tons of solar panels will come to that point.
Recycling
While renewable energy proponents are pinning their hopes on recycling to deal with this coming deluge of e-waste from dead solar panels, only about 10% of them are recycled, and only a small portion of any single panel provides recoverable minerals.
B.F. Randall, who has a background in project development and finance, told Cowboy State Daily that a lot of people are under the impression that recycling a solar panel means you make a new solar panel.
“A solar panel has very little mineral content relative to the volume of the panel,” Randall said. “So, it’s just not something that can be recycled in that sense.”
Polysilicon
The polysilicon in solar panels cannot be recycled at all, he said.
It takes 3 to 5 tons of polysilicon to produce 1 megawatt worth of solar panels. To make it, they take silicon dioxide and mix it with carbon, which is most often derived from coal. However, it’s possible to use wood or graphite.
The mixture is dropped in a furnace at about 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, which means it takes large amounts of constant energy to produce the heat needed for the process.
For every ton of polysilicon produced, 3-4 tons of silicon tetrachloride, a highly toxic compound, also are produced.
As solar panels reach the end of their useful lives, most of that polysilicon will need to be disposed of in landfills.
“Polysilicon … can’t ever be recycled back into polysilicon. If it’s fake cycled into sand it would be absolutely toxic,” Randall said.
Other minerals
It is possible to recover aluminum and copper from a panel’s frame and junction box.
The Grist, a publication of a pro-renewable nonprofit, reported that a recycled panel will produce about $3 in recovered aluminum, copper and glass, which after transportation costs will cost between $12 and $25 to get.
The same panel tossed into a landfill will cost less than a dollar.
There is also a small amount of silver to recover from the panel that’s worth less than the cost to recover it.
As Randall explains in a Substack article, solar panels contain about 60 grams of silver paste. Each panel only has a tiny amount, but the industry altogether consumes nine percent of all silver produced in the world.
If that solar paste were refined silver, it would be worth $6 — but it’s not refined.
Randall said in an interview that the paste contains contaminants that have diluted that refined silver.
“You can’t recover the silver. It doesn’t work that way,” he said.
Regulations
So long as the cost to recover minerals from the solar panels exceeds the value produced, the best way to deal with destroyed or exhausted solar panels is to throw them away, like is done with most wind turbine blades.
Some nonprofits are shipping dead panels to developing countries where the weak amount of electricity they produce still has some benefit to people who have no access to other sources of power.
The European Union is trying to address the problem by requiring manufacturers to finance end-of-life collection and recycling, which will increase the cost of the panels.
So far, only Washington state has passed similar legislation, which will go into effect in 2025.
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VOWG
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Why not, they bury wind turbines.
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NecktopPC
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NF3 (nitrogen trifluoride) is thought to be 17,200 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, according to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Both production and industrial use of NF3 has soared since 1990, and analysts project continued expansion over the coming decade amid strong demand for solar electricity, computers, smartphones and televisions. The NF3 market is expected to rise 13 percent every year and reach $1.2 billion by 2020, according to Hexa Research, a California-based research and consulting firm.
https://www.seeker.com/a-potent-greenhouse-gas-used-to-make-solar-panels-is-on-the-rise-2288834288.html
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Tom Anderson
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Most if not all radiation-active (i.e., “greenhouse) gases react only within specific spectral bands of a radiant energy spectrum, each band with a known temperature. For example, CO2’s major interactive band here in the troposphere has been observed to be at 15 microns wavelength (at minus 80 degrees Celsius, -80°C). What are the interactive spectral bands for this gas, and are they a matter for concern? Is any interactive band significant or is interactivity strictly within the molecule? Everyone seems to have taken up the loose thinking of the alamists.
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Herb Rose
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Since NF3 is an extreme oxidizer and very reactive I don’t see how it can be in the atmosphere. It would first displace other weaker oxidizer to become salts. Isn’t it being used to dissolve glass (NaSiO2) instead of H2F2?
Herb
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John V
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I’m in the semiconductor industry. NF3 is typically used as a “clean” gas, meaning it’s used to “clean” vacuum chambers from the buildup they create during wafer fabrication, also in solar panel manufacturing. The company I work for, along with others, install abatement systems that react with the NF3 and turns it into HF, which is easily treated and neutralized. Very little NF3 gets released into the atmosphere, at least in the US. Fluorine compounds are critical in microchip production, and solar panels, which is almost the same style of fabrication. No better way to “clean” the vacuum chambers.
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T. C. Clark
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C’mon man! Is Joy Biden aware of this? Joey will do something about it…he’s buildin’ a railroad across the Pacific or something like that – call Joey.
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George Nemecek
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What do you mean silicone is toxic?
How?
I seriously doubt this.
The whole panel is recyclable.
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Howdy
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Why are the climate warriors not protesting about this? It’s right up their street. Still it’s not silly, or safe enough I expect. Dressing up like a loony and silly acting wouldn’t impress a bulldozer I guess
Climate activists should be under lock and key for the real harm they do to not only people, but unfortunately, also the planet they claim to care for.
Most ridiculous thing of all, is that their over-zealous and child-like antics have created hate from the very people they need on side, yet they are oblivious, or in denial. Notice they won’t take the sane route and obtain real power to make change, not that they’d get anywhere if they did.
Shooting one-self in the foot is hardly an apt description.
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