How Used Solar Panels Are Powering the Developing World (bloombergquint.com) 174
"In 2016, the International Renewable Energy Agency estimated that as much as 78 million tons of solar-panel waste will be generated by 2050," writes a Bloomberg columnist, adding that that's "almost certainly an undercount..." So what will happen to all those used solar panels?
"Across the developing world, homeowners, farmers, and businesses are turning to cheap, secondhand solar to fill power gaps left by governments and utilities," reports Bloomberg. To meet that demand, businesses ranging from individual sellers on Facebook Marketplace to specialized brokerages are getting into the trade. Earlier this month, Marubeni Corp., one of Japan's largest trading houses, announced that it's establishing a blockchain-based market for such panels. Collectively, these businesses will likely play a crucial role in bringing renewable energy to the world's emerging markets — and keeping high-tech waste out of the trash...
They may not be good enough for San Francisco homeowners and cutting-edge utilities, but they work perfectly well for anyone in a sunny climate in need of stable, off-grid power who doesn't want to pay full price. That's potentially a huge market. Between 2010 and 2019, the number of people living without electricity declined from 1.2 billion to 759 million worldwide. Some of that gap was closed by new power lines and other transmission facilities. But most of it was achieved by installing small solar systems designed to power a village, farm or even a single home. As of last year, 420 million people got their electricity from off-grid solar systems. By 2030, according to the World Bank, that number could nearly double.
A staffer at the used solar equipment exchange EnergyBin said they sometimes have 5 million pieces of photovoltaic equipment on their site.
And one broker estimated there were 10 million used solar panels on the global market, saying his own customers included Pakistani farmers pumping water for irrigation and Lebanese hoteliers seeking alternatives to an unreliable local grid.
"Across the developing world, homeowners, farmers, and businesses are turning to cheap, secondhand solar to fill power gaps left by governments and utilities," reports Bloomberg. To meet that demand, businesses ranging from individual sellers on Facebook Marketplace to specialized brokerages are getting into the trade. Earlier this month, Marubeni Corp., one of Japan's largest trading houses, announced that it's establishing a blockchain-based market for such panels. Collectively, these businesses will likely play a crucial role in bringing renewable energy to the world's emerging markets — and keeping high-tech waste out of the trash...
They may not be good enough for San Francisco homeowners and cutting-edge utilities, but they work perfectly well for anyone in a sunny climate in need of stable, off-grid power who doesn't want to pay full price. That's potentially a huge market. Between 2010 and 2019, the number of people living without electricity declined from 1.2 billion to 759 million worldwide. Some of that gap was closed by new power lines and other transmission facilities. But most of it was achieved by installing small solar systems designed to power a village, farm or even a single home. As of last year, 420 million people got their electricity from off-grid solar systems. By 2030, according to the World Bank, that number could nearly double.
A staffer at the used solar equipment exchange EnergyBin said they sometimes have 5 million pieces of photovoltaic equipment on their site.
And one broker estimated there were 10 million used solar panels on the global market, saying his own customers included Pakistani farmers pumping water for irrigation and Lebanese hoteliers seeking alternatives to an unreliable local grid.
New fad, same consequences (Score:2, Insightful)
So we "recycle" pretty much everything to developing nations nowadays. "They need clothing" dump our garbage clothes. "They need second hand computers", dump electronic wastes. "They need our recycled plastic", dump our dirty plastic garbage.
In every one of those and many others, the advertisement campaign for dumping was always the same. "Here's the nice edge case of recycling actually working, look at those happy dark skinned people for whom our trash is a treasure!"
I guess it's time for dumping of photov
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm, just grind them back to sand if you find them to be a problem? It's mostly just silicon. But while they still work they might as well go to irrigate a poppy field in Afghanistan rather than go to waste (https://www.economist.com/asia/2019/05/16/cheap-solar-panels-boost-the-afghan-poppy-crop).
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I love how the "fuck you, not my problem" attitude is now up to the levels of "just let them produce more opium with it".
You can't make this shit up.
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Interesting)
I love how the "fuck you, not my problem" attitude is now up to the levels of "just let them produce more opium with it".
You can't make this shit up.
But you can.
You get all spun up about good panels that maybe are being replaced by newer ones. Seriously?
Those"brown people" you referred to in your previous post of anger - your solution is to not allow them to have electrical power? Luckyo is pissed, do not allow those people to have access to electrical power dammit!
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Informative)
You really seem a bit dull here. Opium has legitimate medical uses.
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:4, Funny)
And bagel toppings!
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I think just about any drug does. At least I am aware of medicinal uses for LSD, MDMA, THC, cocaine and nicotine beyond the opium you mentioned.
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I think Brandano just did exactly that.
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What is your point?
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Informative)
I think the point is that it makes polluters feel better about producing waste. After all, why care about the waste, it will be reused in the third-world, and then it's their problem.
So while it's a very good thing to reuse solar panels which would otherwise be wasted, it doesn't mean we should not care about the polluting aspects of "clean" energy production. We should continue to try to produce as little waste as possible, including when buying solar panels.
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point is that it makes polluters feel better about producing waste. After all, why care about the waste, it will be reused in the third-world, and then it's their problem.
Kind of odd defining functional solar panels that will not be thrown away, but used to do the work that solar panels do as waste products.
Perhaps in alignment with your argument - we should not allow these people who might use these panels to improve their standard of living to ever get their third world mitts on our functioning solar panels that you believe is waste? That would keep us from taking advantage of them, I suppose.
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading the story it doesn't break down the reuse market. Americans as well as other first world countries reuse solar panels as well. Plenty of Youtube videos on the subject. Plus we all love saving a buck regardless of what country we're from. Far as other countries I'll bet other efficiencies have helped in the propagation of solar. e.g. led lighting. As well as the knock-on effects of educating the populous on the ins and outs of electricity. Also in a way solar is the poor man's "nuclear". We wouldn't be having this kind of success story with nuclear because of it's nature. It's dependency upon an "unreliable" power-grid.
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
Reusing those old solar panels is part of the "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" plan.
Our energy has to come from somewhere, and until nuclear fusion power plants are a common reality, solar is still a lot less polluting than coal or fossil fuels. I'd say it's a lot less polluting than wind too, with the way our current windmills are manufactured.
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IMO, fusion isn't happening at this point.
By the time fusion becomes commercially viable, we'll be drowning in obsolete but still functional solar panels, if not modern, cheap, mass-produced ones. Given that there's no lack of room it's far more likely that we'll end up with mass installations of solar and supplement with wind and grid interconnects.
This is not a knock against fusion or even fission as a tech -- but we'll just follow the easiest path forwards and not what's technologically coolest. Ineffici
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The big problem isn't with the "waste". It's HOW it's recycled that's the problem. For example open-air burning. Recycling as a way of life while not the most desirable if done right could have economic benefits for a country.
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I think you're giving way too much credit to polluters' guilt - and the role of recycling in alleviating that guilt - as any sort of driving factor in consumption. People want stuff and don't forego it because they'll have to throw it away someday. And don't worry, the message that recycling is fake has already circulated
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an real-world win-win situation. The third world needs power, and the developed world has solar panels that are still good, but rendered obsolete by better (but more expensive) panels.
Last week, the anti-solar cabal was yakking about how solar panels can't possibly be recycled. Well, reuse is recycling.
Re: New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Informative)
Re: New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't Reduce, Reuse.
If you can't Reuse, Recycle.
If you can't Recycle... eh... make your damn shit Recyclable.
I think all countries should implement huge fines for companies that make un-recyclable or hard-to-recycle things.
Re: New fad, same consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
"I think all countries should implement huge fines for companies that make un-recyclable or hard-to-recycle things."
Agreed, and I think this should go hand-in-hand with un-repairable things.
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it depends on how much it actually works, which is hard to tell sometimes with genuine journalism being mixed in with fluff pieces aligned with industry interests.
For clothing, generally I see clothing donation as pretty strict about rejecting significantly worn-out clothing, so that seems off base.
The e-waste with computers is a mixed bag. Sure, there is some useful stuff but a whole lot of utterly useless stuff gets dumped in that same direction, non functional and non-reparable equipment, with an obvious downside of ecologically problematic waste material to contend with.
Recycled plastic is by and large making ourselves feel better about using so much single-use plastics, thinking that it can be reused when odds are high that it's just polluting landfill material.
So the question here is what the nature of these panels are. Panels that, say, are 15% efficient being replaced because 20% are available and the real estate is so scarce to push the need to the efficiency upgrade? Then great, good to reuse the product in a context where it's better than nothing. Panels that are being retired because they for some reason don't work anymore? Well that would be a problem.
It's not good to always be certain that it's crap, but it's good to keep a skeptical mind and be aware of the possibility.
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Most solar panels and almost all solar cells ever produced still produce useful output. Some panels have failed due to manufacturing defects but the overwhelming majority of them still work. It's possible to refurb some types of failed panels but mostly it's not worth it.
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is they still work but at 20-25% reduction in production to their original generation rate
More commonly it's at a 10-15% reduction
and then it is also at a much lower efficiency than modern panels
Yes, but being used they're also at a much lower cost per watt of capacity, so this is frankly not a problem.
Personally I have serious doubts that this anything more than an attempt to write off a serious long term problem as not a problem.
Personally? Who the fuck are you, anonymous coward? Personally, I think you're trolling.
Most 3rd world countries would be better off with the cheapest chinese made panels which will be better than 20 year old panels
Yes, if they could afford more total watts, but they can't, so that's irrelevant.
the cost difference in bulk would not be all that dissimilar to carefully dismantling panels and getting them tested, shipped and reinstalled
THAT IS NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS. They are simply dismounted, stacked up on pallets and wrapped, and shipped. No one is DISMANTLING them when they take them down. Testing them is trivial. If they don't work they are either landfilled (bummer) or stacked up for recycling (probable, since it's cheaper than disposing of them).
Maybe that dismounting/dismantling error was the clue that you're a russian troll or a fifty center though, in which case thanks
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, there is some useful stuff but a whole lot of utterly useless stuff gets dumped in that same direction, non functional and non-reparable equipment, with an obvious downside of ecologically problematic waste material to contend with.
The assumption is pretty much that they are getting functioning solar panels.
Is your premise that we are sending them ones that do not work any more, in an effort to not only get rid of waste, but to purposely defraud people who believe they are purchasing functioning panels at a reduced price?
Because equating selling or giving functional solar panels to people who might not have any other access to electricity and will be put into use to computer waste - is just wrong.
An example is that I gave my son my old Jeep. It had about 160 K miles on it. I wanted a new Jeep because I travel a good bit. The old Jeep was still good, and he needed a car at the time. Everyone is happy.
Seems like some of the slashdot crowd is getting sidetracked into thinking that selling/giving solar panels to people who will use them every day - just like my son uses my 5 year old Jeep every day, is somehow the functional equivalent of those crazy old computer recycling schemes.
It isn't.
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I'm saying that it could be as good as you say, but that's the exact same way those 'crazy old computer recycling schemes' were reported. To be sure the depreciation curve isn't so steep as computer equipment, but the fact remains that it's hard to say based on superficial reporting whether it's a perfectly rosy case of a durable, but merely not quite good enough good finding a good home, or some scheme to get good PR and offload some waste expense to another group.
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For clothing, generally I see clothing donation as pretty strict about rejecting significantly worn-out clothing, so that seems off base.
I've seen a few documentaries about the clothing industry. You and I may be wearing our clothes until they're worn-out, but a lot of people seem to be buying new clothes every month and even every week. They wear something maybe a few dozen times and then it's out of style and they don't wear it anymore. That's why we have such a huge problem right now.
Re: New fad, same consequences (Score:2)
This is a bad, bad sign on the "how much it actually works" front. If you think it will work, you trade in it. If you don't think it will work, but that other people will think it will work, make a speculative blockchain token out of it instead.
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clothing in this context is more like unsold merchandise / consignments. Go some place like Dominican Republic and you will find various groups ranging from Charities, NGOs, and private consignment companies giving away and or selling very cheaply never worn old clothing. Tons of stuff like t-shirts with slogans and political candidate names from a decade ago on them and whatever was the popular fad/style of pants or dress two to three cycles ago.
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Technically, reusing is not recycling, it's the step that comes before that. And unless we people in first-world countries reduce our energy usage, we won't reduce our need of generating power, which includes solar panels.
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Ah, but you see, now that solar power is one of the cheapest ways of making electricity, people with a moral objection to it need something to talk about. Old solar panels piling up has become a bit of a hobby horse, along with the "rarity" of rare earth metals.
Never mind that those two things are mutually opposed "problems."
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Informative)
This is not that. These panels will continue to work for decades at only a small reduction in output. Unsurprised to see your daily demonstration of ignorance, though
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Funny)
"Daily Demonstration of Ignorance" sounds like a good name for a YouTube channel.
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The problem in many developing nations is not how to better the electricity they receive - via lower prices per kWh, or better voltage regulation, or allowing higher power appliances.
They're not into the "I have 100 amps at 120V available but want more", they're into the "I don't have electricity, and a $10 solar panel (at 5% efficiency instead of the original 14%) with a $10 40 Ah battery (instead of the original 68) and a $2 for a LED light will allow me to get more light than a petrol lamp that b
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small reduction? you mean quite a significant reduction of their designed capacity
It's not significant if the panels are priced accordingly. And frankly, even the oldest panels ever produced that are still in service (many have been replaced for economic reasons of being able to get more output from the same area) are now operating with less than 15% degradation. That is both significant if you were counting on them not degrading (which would be stupid) and also small if you're talking about total output and the number of years which have passed, since it's far less than expected.
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You have any sources for that line of bullshit?
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It's true that separating gold from PCBs can involve some pretty nasty chemicals and that recycling those things without proper care is a bad idea. Don't let that get you distracted in this case. Solar panels, which basically consist of silicon with very small amounts of wiring with almost no gold content, are completely different recycling problem from computers so this discussion is completely offtopic. With solar panels, mostly you just reuse them. In the end, you take the wire bits off and the rest ca
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Yes, like giving the poor brown children our second hand computers was a win-win. They get an education, we don't have to pay for nearly impossible to properly recycle electronics.
The end result was that those brown children got to poison themselves trying to separate the handful of valuable metals from all the electronic garbage, and we didn't have to pay for recycling it properly.
Your outrage over something not even remotely related to that is telling.
Let's not allow those "brown people" as you disparagingly call them, to have these panels. No functioning solar panels for you!
You might rethink your outrage, because right now you sound a lot like you want these people to remain without any power at all.
Now go relax a bit.
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Second hand, *working* computers are a boon in poor places where they are *reused*, regardless of the skin colour of the children who live there.
Non-working waste electronics are highly recyclable, but it is a problem that they are often recycled in places with poor working standards and that is absolutely something we should improve.
I realize you're spouting propaganda, but at least try to make it make some sense.
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BladeRunner 2049 covered this nicely.
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bingo - short term and at small scale its a win-win. When some little non-profit collects old PCs, or solar panels that all work and goes at stands them up somewhere and setting up a little community center - that is a win-win!
When some big corporate actors get "in on it" it turns into green-washing. They gather up a bunch of garbage they don't want to dispose of properly, mixed with enough serviceable equipment to make the entire thing just credible, and dump it on some ill equipped recipients who may or m
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People living near gas/diesel/coal/oil refineries are recycling all those pollutants into cancers every day! And since people are bio-degradable, it's a win-win!
Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember "the three R's"
- Reduce
- Reuse
- Recycle
Solar is booming and it's never going to go away. It turns unused space into energy, and we've got a lot of unused space, and a voracious appetite for energy.
Given the amount of time panels have to be installed to break even, ("The typical solar payback period in the U.S. is just above 8 years. " -- https://news.energysage.com/un... [energysage.com]) I'm surprised we're seeing much in the way of a used panel market. Panels do degrade over time, and more efficient panels are being made, but these gains are such a small percentage that it seems to make more sense to just leave up an old panel and continue to squeeze more money out of it, rather than replace it with a new panel. I suppose this makes some economic sense at large scales or where space is limited, but not at an individual's installation?
But if you really want to reset your payback-date for another 3-5% efficiency, you may as well put it in the hands of someone that can't wait for that. If some charity is footing the transportation/installation, it's free power for someone that needs it. And they won't care if it loses 10% of its power a decade from now, they'll continue to use it until it falls apart. In the end they'll probably get more KWH out of the panel than the original owners did. Unlike clothes and computers, those panels are going to be in service in Africa or wherever for at least a decade. Places like that have an absurd amount of "free space" to put panels, even compared to developed countries. Unlike us, they don't need the space the old panels are taking up, so they'll just ADD MORE PANELS to their collector. I see this as a total win. I wouldn't be surprised to see less developed places like that eventually surpass the develped world in solar production for exactly this reason.
If you want to look at "renewable energy waste", go check out wind turbines. I was shocked to see how often blades are replaced on those beasts, and there's currently NO market for them in recycle OR reuse. They're just burying all of them! Fiberglass is really hard to recycle, ("the biggest problem with Fiberglass is that it is nearly impossible to recycle" - https://recyclenation.com/2014... [recyclenation.com] ) and nobody wants the blades. We really need to work on "blade refurbishment", to keep those behemoths out of the landfills.
I suppose the biggest down-side of this though is that if you ship panels to Africa and they use them, they're not going to get taken care of where they break. They'll just take them out of service (or unplug the bad panel and not even bother removing it from the array) and so eventually they're going to have a lot of dead panels piling up there. As you said, they don't recycle easily, and especially not there. But I suppose when you've got virtually unlimited space, you've got landfill for as far as the eye can see... I suppose we'll just be kicking that can down the road a bit, hoping for a solution for a problem we fixed by making it someone else's problem?
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Its still early days in the industry and things like recycling lag behind but will catch up eventually.
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I suppose this makes some economic sense at large scales or where space is limited, but not at an individual's installation?
I suspect that's most of it. Utility scale solar is much cheaper than residential solar, which makes the payback period shorter. For a utility with a big solar farm and growing energy demands, replacing old panels is a cheap way to meet some of that demand.
Except (Score:2)
Maybe your limited mind thinks used solar panels are garbage but luckily other people do not.
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"Here's the nice edge case of recycling actually working, look at those happy dark skinned people for whom our trash is a treasure!"
You are angry about the part that noted that over a 9 year period, 1.2 billion people gained access to electrical power?
Re:New blockchain fad, same consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:New blockchain fad, same consequences (Score:5, Funny)
He read the summary! GET HIM!
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> How is some rural guy going to connect these solar panels together and use them?
With wire, presumably.
You don't strictly need anything fancy for basic power. You do not need an MPPT* controller. You don't even necessarily need an inverter or even a battery charger.
Most PV panels output of just under 48 volts open circuit, and around 36 volts at max power. That can feed directly into a bank of lead-acid batteries without anything fancy. No, it's not especially great for the life span of the batteries, b
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The sad state of the issue is, that In America. There is so much of a sigma around being poor, that Americans would rather go without, and say they don't want it anyways, compared to getting it second hand at a diminished quality, but still get some real benefits (Often for a better price per quality). Companies too tend to really hate the second hand sales of products. Because that means they are competing with their own products, and also their brand name may get tarnished if someone has issue with an o
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https://www.greentechmedia.com... [greentechmedia.com]
Economically it can make sense. Going from 15% to 20% efficient panels at a higher voltage does pay off.
Or if a windstorm tears up the installation you might end up with a large number or old panels that cannot be mixed with the new panels, they are in series after all. The string has to match. So you have an odd lot by your scale, but more than enough for some village on a smaller scale.
And the silicon in solar cells is not recyclable given the very pure silicon has been in
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Re:New fad, same consequences (Score:5, Informative)
For example at this website you can buy used solar panels for extremely cheap. Depending on you use case you might be fine with having a larger array for way cheaper vs paying for new panels and getting the same output but in a smaller space
https://store.santansolar.com/... [santansolar.com]
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No, this is a poor use of the word "recycle". This is just someone else reusing the equipment that is still viable, just not optimal.
If I sell a car after using it to someone who continues to use it, I'm not claiming I "recycled" the car. It isn't until the components are stripped and the steel melted down that it would considered "recycled".
There's a difference between the secondary market for usable goods and exporting waste.
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If they can still make juice, what's the problem?
Solar grade silicon is currently at $27/kg, but the easiest way to recycle the stuff would be to throw it in a silicon smelting furnace. Metallurgical grade silicon is at about $2/kg. After you take off the glass and the plastic parts maybe you can find someome that can take what's left of the panel for maybe $0.5/kg, not including transportation costs. This may not sound like much, but can be significant for a developing country.
The Chinese are not only not
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> So we "recycle" pretty much everything to developing nations nowadays. "They need clothing" dump our garbage clothes. "They need second hand computers", dump electronic wastes. "They need our recycled plastic", dump our dirty plastic garbage.
One of these things is not like the other...
This isn't "dumping." It's not even "recycling." It's reusing. A used solar panel is still very likely to be perfectly usable, just not as good as a new one. They aren't garbage, and there is a market for them. (As there
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What this "recycling" is showing is that the solar panels aren't at the end of their life. They may not generate much electricity in far northern or southern latitudes but they are more than adequate for generating electricity at/near the equator in areas that receive lots of sunlight.
The difference with your other examples is that most of that recycling had actually come to the end of use for its intended purpose. The plastic was no longer good for holding things, the computers no longer worked (in most ca
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I guess it's time for dumping of photovoltaics, since we really don't know what to do with ones we're tossing in rapidly growing numbers as those installed in the first solar boom have started to reach the end of their useful lives,
There's nothing end of life about solar panels. There are simply more efficient ones on the market capable of more power per sqm and they are replacing old ones.
Stop repeating the myth that solar has a short life expectancy.
Reuse is optimal recycling. (Score:2)
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Exactly. I've been saying for years that the mandra "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" has the order wrong. We know from the massive conservation efforts during the Oil Crisis of the early 1970s that conservation really doesn't do much. At very best, "Reduce" can get you maybe 20-30% reduction in consumption and only under extreme conditions (if you think the Oil Crisis wasn't extreme, I suggest you go and re-read your US history because you clearly didn't live through it). But "Reuse" something just once, and yo
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Here's my favorite example: if you reduce your use of paper grocery bags by packing them a little fuller, you'll maybe save a bag here and there, say one out of every five or six, but you have to deal with heavier bags and the chance that they'll rip. Whereas if you take your bags back to the store and reuse them just once, you've slashed your consumption of bags by half, with only the slightest of extra effort on your part. Reduce is bunk; Reuse is where it's at.
Of course you could use a reusable bag or a tote/basket/bin (something like this is what I use https://i.imgur.com/pchlnqL.jp... [imgur.com]). This would bring reduce back to the front since your are drastically reducing the use of paper bags. 8^)
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. Seems that we should do some serious improvement of waste processing.
'establishing a blockchain-based market' (Score:4, Insightful)
They still need some basic understand of EE. (Score:2)
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In other words they need to convert 12v
I'm not so sure it's an easy statement to say that the output of the solar panel will be 12V.
The ones I have will produce anywhere from 16V to 60V each depending on the weather. I use microinverters, one per panel, which requires you to be connected to the grid and they take a little bit of the power from the grid to operate (also designed to stop producing 220/240V if there is a power outage to keep the electric company employees safe while working on a power line they expect to be dead).
Other home instal
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So you're assuming that everyone in Africa is ignorant? Just because they are poor doesn't mean they aren't intelligent, and many of them are educated. Yes, they'll need inverters to make much use of their solar panels. I'm sure they'll figure this out the same way people here do, by Googling it.
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In other words they need to convert 12v into whatever their shit runs on (110-220v AC)
For the applications that are being talked about - Why would you use an inverter at all? This is energy being used close to the point of production. Low voltage DC systems would be perfectly adequate for most lighting applications, small irrigation pumps etc. Inverters are efficient but they're not 100% efficient.
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A lot of the DC stuff is more efficient than AC versions too. Household AC is dangerous legacy stuff we should really be moving away from.
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"Dirt farmers"... unless you're implying they're farming dirt (i.e. trying to grow dirt or something) and unless you think all farms use hydroponics or aeroponics, the majority of farming is done in dirt.
Everybody eats, so everybody needs farmers.
So really, I'm not sure what you tried to imply by saying "dirt farmer".
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Yeah, farmers don't know anything about electricity. There are also no electricians in the country.
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Last time I was in India when they needed electricity for the work site they sent a boy up the utility pole to wrap the bare ends of the extension cord wires on to the line.
I don't know how many boys they lost experimenting with how far from the generator they needed to be for it to work, but by the time the electricity reached the work site there was barely enough to power an electric drill motor running very slowly.
Shipping (Score:2)
I'd love to have some of those used panels. I found a company in Arizona selling them, but the shipping to Virginia costs more than the panels themselves, placing the total cost per watt far above that of new panels you can order on Amazon with free Prime shipping. In developing countries, they have to be shipped globally whether they are new or used, so they can take major advantage of the lower panel costs.
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You aren't kidding on shipping costs. A cheap panel sounded interesting, like a new gadget to play with but they want over $200 to ship an $80 panel! I guess the dimensions require freight shipping. So not bad if you order a dozen but for a single panel forget it.
new ingredient to 3rd world shanty (Score:2)
Re:new ingredient to 3rd world shanty (Score:4, Insightful)
instead of just wood and corrugated sheet metal, now they can make the roof with old solar panels and it can charge some batteries and run some lights at night,
Exactly.
Reminds me of a story about solar power I listened to a year or two ago. This was a school project that some kid came up with.
You would take a clear soda bottle, fit in a couple small PV cells, a rechargeable battery and a couple LEDs in the cap. Of course all wired. Push this into a hole in the roof of the hovel - and these people now have a light source. Keeps them from having to buy kerosene for lighting purposes.
That's the extent of these people's access to electricity.
That some Slashdotters are outraged by an attempt to get functional PV panels to these same folks is amazing.
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Re:new ingredient to 3rd world shanty (Score:4, Insightful)
yup, lights and maybe a portable radio for news & weather that is an important staple of civilization
Not a portable radio, a recycled smartphone with a very cheap pre-paid SIM, perhaps shared between several families. News, weather, market prices for crops, Google, Wikipedia... even if the data connection is slow and limited, access to the Internet gives people access to roughly all human knowledge, giving far more value than broadcast radio, for little more cost.
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This guy developed a product that sounds like what you describe: https://newatlas.com/the-light... [newatlas.com]
The stats are not great, 120 lm, but of course much better than no light at all. For reference 400 lm is equivellent to a 40W incandescent bulb.
You can make a light even simpler than that though, literally just a bottle filled with water and some bleech: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mag... [bbc.co.uk]
Of course it only works in the day but the cost is close to zero.
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It costs a lot less if you drop the battery and only use the lights during the day.
Only Engineers Really Change the World (Score:2)
I remember reading about this, though not the "used" aspect, several months back. An article noting that the solar panels are stacked up 3 stories deep in Kabul transshipment yards. Pumping irrigation water is an ideal job for solar; as long as the water gets there at some point in the day, job done.
I thought that the $2.5T and a hundred thousand dead or whatever were not going to materially affect Afghanistan's life. The failures had piled up deep at that point. They'd paved 2000 km of roads in 20 y
Can I have a few? (Score:2)
Living in the western world here... where exactly can I obtain all of these free used solar panels to save me from skyrocketing energy bills?
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The problem with your analysis is that the Chinese government was subsidizing sales of solar panels and now they aren't. The Chinese government chipped in to make selling the panels below market rate profitable, which is a form of dumping even if they're not being sold below the actual cost of production.
Re:Because of China. (Score:4, Informative)
whoops botched my link, https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
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The Chinese government chipped in to make selling the panels below market rate profitable, which is a form of dumping even if they're not being sold below the actual cost of production.
I feel like this is perfectly acceptable way to grow a nascent industry into a shape in which it becomes self-sustaining. Honestly I can't blame them for doing this since in the long run, everyone profits from this. If the alternative was solar industry growing to its current size many years later than it actually did, considering our general lack of time to deal with climate change, I'll gladly take your Chinese "dumping" instead.
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The normal way to do that is with end-user subsidies, which don't only benefit your buddies' solar panel factory.
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Right, and some of that is bullshit that interferes with a free market.
The US gave cash infusions to solar panel companies to get them going but it didn't chip in money for every panel to make the prices lower. That's different. But yes, it does engage in all kinds of fuckery in other markets.
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But what you won't do is admit you were wrong, which is all I got out of reading your comment. They were dumping, you claimed they weren't, evidence was provided that they were, now you've moved the goalposts to "they aren't dumping" to "I'm glad they're dumping".
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But what you won't do is admit you were wrong, which is all I got out of reading your comment
I wasn't wrong so I don't know how I could "admit" this. China made massive investments in the whole PV industry chain and the investments paid off.
They were dumping, you claimed they weren't
I claimed no such thing, read my comment again. I simply said that any dumping was inconsequential since industry improvements would have led to lower prices regardless of whether any dumping actually happened (a sufficient condition; doesn't require any other condition). That is not a claim to whether dumping happened or not.
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BTW, regarding some numbers...PV cell cost before the dedicated PV silicon transition (pre-2000 or so) was several dollars per watt. After the transition it was tens of cents per watt. Even if you dumped the price down to zero, it would still be like 90% of the decrease in price coming from manufacturing improvement ($5 per watt -> $0.5 per watt) and only like 10% of the decrease in price ($0.5 per watt -> $0 per watt) coming from any possible dumping. The claim that dumping is responsible for the cur
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No, the Chinese government subsidised the buying of panels domestically, not the manufacture. The issue was, as your own link notes, that when the subsidies ended there was a big drop in sales in China. That meant that a lot of manufacturers has surplus stock that they needed to shift, and looked to overseas markets.
In other words the issue was caused not by subsidies making sale below cost profitable, but because previously China was buying all the available stock so there wasn't any left to export. Once d
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Nope. Cheap polycristaline silicon (i.e. not the expensive monocrystaline silicon used for semiconductors) has been in usage for solar cells since the 90ies and not by just the Chinese. The Chinese contributed to the price drop by significantly adding to the global capacity of polycristaline silicon. Also, that increase in capacity came with a parallel plan to actually install the panels in China. So, they were more like: "we want PV panels, but we want to make them ourselves".
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