“We need to face the fact that solar panels do fail over time, and there’s a lot of them out there,” he said. “And what do we do when they start to fail? It’s not right throwing that responsibility on the consumer, and that’s where we’re at right now.”
“We believe the big blind spot in the US for recycling is that the cost far exceeds the revenue,” Meng said. “It’s on the order of a 10-to-1 ratio.”
But we’ll need to develop one soon, because the solar e-waste glut is coming. By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects that up to 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their life,
ht/ lurker
Where’d it come from?
Seize Bill Gates’ assets and use them to shoot the stuff into the Sun.
Simple solutions to simple problems.
izlamo delenda est …
Where I live, and I think this is probably true in most places, I have to pay a fee for disposal of my old tires when I buy new tires for my vehicles.
Which I don’t like but consider fair because I’m the one that bought and used the tires in the first place. Somebody has to pay for it and I don’t think forcing people who don’t use them to do it is the right thing.
It should be the same for solar panels. Those who use them pay the price for their disposal when they’re worn out.
IMO
Output starts dropping after about 10 years or so and represent one of the biggest financial hurdles to overcome not to mention being a real pain in the ass if they’re on your roof! If you are going to replace them at the 25 year mark better factor in a new roof at the same time!
I worked at a hazardous waste dump/landfill until i quit four years ago,we we received two forty yard roll offs full of panels six days a week every week for at least three years.
TRANSLATION: It costs far more to recycle the stupid things than the raw materials are worth, making it cheaper to make new ones rather than recycle the old ones, which end up either getting dumped into landfills where they seep toxic chemicals over time, or the get dumped into hellholes like Somalia, where they burn e-waste in open pits spewing clouds of toxic fumes. It also ignores the ginormous open pit mines where some of the material is extracted, or the fact that many of these elements are almost entirely produced by shit-hole countries with egregious human rights violations like China. But at least the original purchaser gets to feel good about “saving the planet”, or something.
Do the same thing I do, when Chinese death (light) bulbs die:
FEED ‘EM to libtards. >:->
So, pretty soon, along with the abandoned mattresses and chairs we see on country roads we will be seeing abandoned PV panels. Great. Nice to know that being green actually ends up destroying Mother Earth.
What? No comments about responding to a “fire call” with this crap on the roof…
Another prominent example of the law of unintended consequences coming back to bite us in the ass.
Anymouse: Shocking isn’t it.
Who gives a shit. We only have 8.5 years to go, as per the credentialed and highly esteemed climatologist, John F-N Kerry.
Let’s party like it’s 2029!
Any mainstream green proposal is far worse for the environment than traditional methods. With the only exception being nuclear energy, and surprise, surprise, the environwackos want those banned.
EVs are a HORRID disaster for the environment, in first place.
They are in first place not only because manufacturing and disposal of these cars is wrecking the place, but because they are the main driver of environmental destroying solar and wind power so the owners can virtue signal their cars aren’t powered by coal.
Sounds like we’ll need a federal law to force solar panels to be recycled & disposed of in the state in which they were used. In other words, force states like California, which require new builds to have solar panels to keep their own waste as the panels fail.
Oh, c’mon … there are no “unintended consequences” – the people who made them knew perfectly well what’s in em and what would be necessary when they wore out.
They just plain didn’t GAF.
The manufacturers rake in the cash, the consumer’s getting a “tax break” (which means his neighbors and friends and family are footing the bill), and a whole new army of bureaucrats is established to oversee production, manufacturing, installation, and disposal – which will be parasites on the taxpayers for the foreseeable future.
The whole “green” movement is a scam – it’s the flotsam and jetsam of the brazenly failed European socialism who have migrated their poisonous ideology to America. The manufacturers pay politicians for sweetheart deals, sell their crap, then go out of business. As little as a $3,200 donation to Obola’s campaign could get you some $15 Million in grants – not a bad scam, huh?
izlamo delenda est …
This is a non-issue for the tree-hugger crowd. Wind turbines kill a lot of birds and that’s a non-issue too. These same people have no concept of what it’s going to take to beef up the electrical grid for all those electric cars that are coming our way.
Myself, I’m going to have to work up a game plan to escape the inevitable hurricane with the electric car that will be forced upon me. Hmm, drive 300 miles and then charge the car for 8 hours, drive 300 miles, charge it for 8. Rinse and repeat. I’m sure there will be hundreds and hundreds of charging stations available along the route…
Remember, the left judges themselves on their intentions not the results.
10:1 cost vs revenue problem?
Joe Biden: “Poof! They’re infrastructure!”
Paid for American taxpayers.
Damn things are dangerous to dispose of. Just like the batteries in those Tesla’s. A Tesla battery weighs 1000 pounds and required at a minimum of 100,000 pounds of raw product to make that one battery. Chernobyl on wheels. The greenies think they are saving the planet when in fact they are accelerating our demise. But they look so smug in the Electric cars, saving the planet, one car at a time.
“Hmm, drive 300 miles and then charge the car for 8 hours, drive 300 miles, charge it for 8.”
Someone needs to start making little miniature coal fired power plants that you can tow behind you (like those little luggage trailers for small cars with no trunk space) so you don’t end up stuck beside the highway with dead batteries and no way to charge them.
Anymouse
APRIL 13, 2021 AT 10:01 AM
“What? No comments about responding to a “fire call” with this crap on the roof…”
…I was a roof rat, but folks on my district didn’t have money for this, because it was new and exotic and VERY inefficient at the time.
Also, Democrats weren’t ruining everything then, we were still a few decades from full-on Communist back then, and no one else even WANTED it.
This could easily be a threat though, depending on how and by who it’s tied to household systems, and if it has a battery storage somewhere. Could still be live even if the house is cast off the grid by the utility company.
Here’s what the kids have to deal with now. It ain’t pretty.
https://www.firerescue1.com/electric-fire/articles/6-steps-to-safe-effective-solar-panel-ess-fire-attack-JtqmGDpotCQQrBfP/
…notice they say the best way to stay safe is to not get on the roof. That is ideal for safety, but antithetical to proper ventilation which adds MANY other challenges to effectively managing the fire.
Proper ventilation directs the fire where you want it to go and away from where you don’t because you typically cut the hole right over the fire (which is fun because walking on the roof feels like walking inside a bounce house because it’s weakened and it can be so hot the tar melts to your boots, and you want backup because you might fall through, but that’s where the FIRE is, so that’s where the HOLE goes. That’s why you use Skinny, expendable kids like I was for that), and this also reduces heat dramatically in the roof and releases fire gases to reduce the likelihood of flash over, AND it improves visibility inside the structure for SAR and FF purposes.
It’s a big damn deal if you can’t do it.
…in my patch the sun is strongest the most consistently to the South, so that’s where most solar crap would go.
Which is fine as long as the fire isn’t on the South side of the house. If it IS, cutting a North side hole will just make it spread.
And that’s the ELECTRIC stuff.
…some houses do solar water hearing. That’s where you pump water to the roof through a pipe snaking back and forth in a box, with everything painted black to absorb heat.
This means you have hot water pipes on the roof where you don’t normally, and it’s something else that could burst and cause shrapnel and scald injuries unexpectedly when it does.
Yay, just what you need at a fire. EXTRA hazards.
So no, I didn’t have this issue myself, but I can surely see where it can be one NOW.
Pray for the kids that have to deal with today’s foolishness TODAY, they’re gonna NEED it…
Why can’t I just burn them in my annual Earth Day tire fire?
You’d be arrested by the EPA for releasing toxic fumes into the environment. And Earth day (I hate Earth day) which is also Lenin’s birth day is only 9 days away now. Maybe we should all go to Taco Hell that day and release a giant cloud of green vapor and a great big massive fart just to piss off the annoying greenies. We all fart in their general direction.
Worse than a Jap dirt bike(Awesome machines BTW) though loses $1000’s in value the moment of title, and you drive away with it a happy sucker..