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Dead Solar Panels Are About To Become a Lot More Valuable (theverge.com) 48

Posted by msmash from the here's-to-hoping dept.
In the coming years, recyclers will hopefully be able to mine billions of dollars worth of materials from discarded solar panels, according to a new analysis published this week. From a report: That should ease bottlenecks in the supply chain for solar panels while also making the panels themselves more sustainable. Right now, most dead solar panels in the US just get shredded or chucked into a landfill. The economics just don't shake out in recycling's favor. The value you can squeeze out of a salvaged panel hasn't been enough to make up for the cost of transporting and recycling it. That's on track to change, according to the recent analysis by research firm Rystad Energy.

Rystad expects the value of recyclable materials from solar panels to grow exponentially over the next several years, ballooning to $2.7 billion in 2030 from just $170 million this year. That's thanks to a growing demand for solar coupled with an anticipated pinch in the materials needed to make panels. Technological advancements are also making it easier to extract more valuable materials from old panels, making recycling a sweeter deal financially. Currently, solar energy makes up just over 3 percent of the global electricity mix. But the world's energy systems are at the start of a drastic makeover to bring more renewable energy online.
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Dead Solar Panels Are About To Become a Lot More Valuable More

Dead Solar Panels Are About To Become a Lot More Valuable

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  • . . .When it will become commercially viable to mine landfills.

    • As soon as it becomes cheap enough to hire laborers to sift through it.

      I.e., it's already being done in China, probably by children. We literally ship our garbage there for them to sift through, burn the crap, melt down the next-to-worthless shit, and sell it back to us.

  • How much pollution will this solve? Much of the reason the US manfuacturing was moved to China is because they can pollute as much as they want there. Will recycling cut back on that?

    • This article has no solution for recycling anyway, just says there is research into it. It doesn't exist.

      So, China will continue to grow its carbon footprint. Soon India will take off and be like China. What the USA does won't matter, especially with the tiny amounts of green we're making in reality. Token gesture projects are all we've ever done.

    • If we really want to save on pollution(from the production process), we should push reusing harder. Solar panels last a few decades. There are local cottage industries on acquiring and reselling used(usually repossessed) solar panels that generally are only a few years old, but usually sourcing those is about who you know. The panels are still fairly efficient and the materials cost as part of the installation is obviously much lower.

  • Difference between shills and analysts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Friday July 08, 2022 @04:36PM (#62685684)

    So they mention the value of copper as measured in CO2 emissions per tonne. And they keep very, very quiet about polysilicon on the same subject, while mentioning that it's good because it's expensive.

    For those unaware, the main reason why "zero emissions" brand slapped on PVs is a bold faced lie and why putting PVs in low solar intensity areas is a net negative for CO2 emissions is because of how PV grade polysilicon is made. After you dig up that high purity stuff, you shove it into a coal furnace and cook it there until the process effectively burns out impurities to the point where it's usable for modern PVs (I believe it's currently at nine nines). It results in massive CO2 emissions to make PV grade polysilicon, that is then zeroed out through book keeping shenanigans that allow for "zero emissions" branding.

    "Shills vs analysts" also becomes obvious from the fact that they don't mention the main problem with recycling PV panels at all. The extreme difficulty in separating them into constituent parts, and the likely extreme energy requirements (and probably a lot of fine worksmanship that is going to be all but impossible to automate in a cost effective manner) for any process that would be even remotely able to do so.

    • Carbon debt not too bad for solar panels though, takes about 3 years of operation to work that off. For device that will work for more than 2 decades it's not so bad. Compared that to a much shorter lived thing like an electric vehicle where battery debt is somewhat longer, 3.5 years.

      The real issue is that to bootstrap a truly green economy will take massive initial fossil fuel use, instead we're throttling that while doing puny nickel/dime green energy projects. That's doomed to fail here in USA. We need

      • Solar is "not that bad" on carbon debt but when compared to other "green" alternatives it isn't all that great either.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (You may need to scroll down for the 2020 numbers to show.)

        Then comes things like costs. Rooftop solar is very expensive, and if put on ground level in utility scale solar power facilities then it is taking up a lot of land. Land that could be used to grow things that are actually green, not just "green" in theory.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        How much

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Same old lies from macretard, pushing the nuke barrow nobody wants. Wanna see massive subsidies, look no further than nukes in France.
          We all know the facts, nukes are too slow to build, and too expensive to build, run and decommission have unsolvable waste problem, and nobody wants nukes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Yes, as I note above bookkeeping shenanigans are the favourite white washing method of the Big Solar. Shenanigans like comparing energy generated to absolutely worst case scenario that doesn't really exist outside some developing nations for example.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rhipf ( 525263 )

      Serious question here. Do the impurities have to be burned off using coal? Is it possible to burn off the impurities using electrical heat generated via some form of green energy?
      If the answer to the above is that any form of heat can be used to burn off the impurities than the "zero emissions" branding is only currently misleading and in the future could actually be true even accounting for the polysilicon processing.

      • As usual, lots of misinformed experts here. The first step in converting sand (SiO2) to Si does use carbon (coal or charcoal). With heat you convert the SiO2 and C to Si and CO2. The Si made by this process (megalurgical grade or MG-Si) is 98%-99% pure ("two nines") This process is done at large scale, but very little of that Si ends up in solar cells or microelectronics. Most of the MG-Si ends up in Al alloys or silicones. The Si in polysilison PV cells is something like 99.9995% pure (five or six nines

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Speaking of "misinformed experts" like I mention above, we're now closer to nine nines for PV grade polysilicon, which was in large part responsible for improvement in efficiency. Microelectronics are nine to ten. We started around three in early 2000s. We got to five a few years ago.

          Also what is actually generated is not CO2 but CO. This converts to CO2 later before being vented, because venting large amounts of CO is horrible for everything, not to mention has a chance of being life threatening on massive

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        You don't have to use coal. Carbon is a handy place to deposit the oxygen you want to drive off things you're smelting, not just silicon dioxide, which is why it's used. A steel process that uses hydrogen as a replacement is ramping up, and also one for aluminum. The aluminum process is interesting also because the moon is covered in aluminum oxide, doesn't have any coal, and oxygen is sort of useful there.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          That process is extremely expensive and utterly uncompetitive with standard coal based one. SSAB only pushed the process with hope that massive carbon penalties would remove everyone else from certain markets (mostly EU), so they could sell extremely expensive "carbon neutral" steel into them.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            That process is extremely expensive and utterly uncompetitive with standard coal based one.

            It is more expensive if you consider the external costs of CO2 emission to be zero. The EU does not.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              EU hasn't considered CO2 emissions to be free for a long time. Their current price is nowhere near where it needs to be to make SSAB's process viable however, according to latest I've read from SSAB.

    • Diagrams and photos: Mass production test... [researchgate.net]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Uecker ( 1842596 )

      Life cycle analysis is done though and looks very good for solar. Energy pay back time is decreasing for solar and recent studies seem to put it below 2 years (not that I looked closely). Nuclear power is of course also not emission free if you consider the full life cycle which also includes mining etc.

      https://doi.org/10.1088/1755-1... [doi.org]
      https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcle... [doi.org]
      https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scit... [doi.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        Yes, this is why I make a difference between Big Solar shills and actual experts. There are plenty of Big Solar shills. It's massive global industry at this point. Most of the shills are Chinese, because it's the Chinese who are mass dumping PVs on global market and have been for many years at this point, which is why most of the competition other than them has already been eliminated. It's also the Chinese who overwhelmingly do refining of polysilicon, because you can do whatever you want with numbers in C

  • the linked article doesn't have any viable demonstration of recycling polysilicon.or silver but just says there is research into doing so.

    So, solar panels go into the trash for now.

  • Does this mean that Solyndra will turn a profit after all?

    • Does this mean that Solyndra will turn a profit after all?

      Post should get a +1 and FUNNY tag

    • I realize that this is a joke, but if Solyndra were still around then this would be bad for them. They went out of business because their technology was rendered uneconomical thanks to huge cost reductions in traditional solar panels. This would just exacerbate that difference.
  • Yes, especially, the Mars. The land grabbing, and all the resources on those planets, is indeed going to be essential in developing an interstellar civilization.

  • Al, Cu, Si, SiO2 and (Score:3)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Friday July 08, 2022 @05:29PM (#62685848)
    What else? Thats pretty much the ingredient list for solar panels. Im pretty sure straight silicon cells are still the mainstay. Correct me if I’m wrong please.

    So, a ton of solar cells is worth about as much as a ton of mixed soda cans, beer bottles and a small roll of copper wire. With a few crashed hard drives thrown in to represent the exotic elements. Totally worth recycling, but not particularly high value. And the polysilicon and exotics certainly cant be re-used without major purification.

    I’m all for recycling, but I’m not convinced this could address shortages in any meaningful way.

  • By saying solar PV panels are too valuable to chuck into a landfill they mean material costs are high enough now that there's profit in recycling old solar PV. This is not a good thing. It means energy costs are going up.

    Solar power on the grid exists only because it is popular among voters. This is an industry that rests on getting government subsidies. Without the subsidies then solar power would be something for only off the grid use, like pocket calculators and communication satellites.

    Solar power i

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jsonn ( 792303 )
      I fully agree that we need to stop subsidizing goal and natural gas. Oh wait, that's not what you meant, is it?

      • That is what I meant. Stop subsidies. Stop all the subsidies. If solar power is go great on costs and whatever then it will thrive. My guess is once the subsidies are gone it will fall on its face.

  • New Crime Wave Imminent? (Score:3)

    by NoWayNoShapeNoForm ( 7060585 ) on Saturday July 09, 2022 @06:23AM (#62687174)

    Once they figure out a cost effective way to recycle solar panels then criminals will find cost effective ways to remove them from your home to make some illegal bucks.

    It's happened to copper wiring...

    It's happened to catalytic converters...

    It's probably happened to other stuff that I cannot remember at the moment...

  • Recycling isn't a problem because the aggregate amounts aren't sufficient, recycling is a problem because the cost per unit doesn't pay off. It's the same with plastics, it doesn't matter if a trillion dollars of plastics are discarded every year, what matters is if it's cheaper to recycle plastics or make new plastics. The paper mentions no new techniques or technologies which will make the problem easier or cheaper, so there's still the big "Step 2: ????" problem before the profit.

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