Posted on 07/20/2022 8:40:35 PM PDT by george76
California .. the bill is coming due.
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no comprehensive plan to dispose of them. Now, panels purchased under those programs are nearing the end of their typical 25-to-30-year life cycle.
Many are already winding up in .. contaminate groundwater with toxic heavy metals such as lead, selenium and cadmium.
Sam Vanderhoof, a solar industry expert and chief executive of Recycle PV Solar, says that only 1 in 10 panels are actually recycled
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The looming challenge over how to handle truckloads of waste...
“The industry is supposed to be green,” Vanderhoof said. “But in reality, it’s all about the money.”
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the industry’s “capacity is woefully unprepared for the deluge of waste
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It’s not just a problem in California but also nationwide.
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there will be an increase in the solar panels entering the waste stream
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Recycling solar panels isn’t a simple process.
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Only about $2 to $4 worth of materials are recovered from each panel.
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That skews the economic incentives against recycling. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated that it costs roughly $20 to $30 to recycle a panel versus $1 to $2 to send it to a landfill.
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The department expects the number of installed solar panels in the next decade to exceed hundreds of millions in California alone, and that recycling will become even more crucial as cheaper panels with shorter life spans become more popular.
A lack of consumer awareness about the toxicity of materials in some panels and how to dispose of them is part of the problem
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
That could be true also.
I’ll need to check with a family member.
They have a system installed in their home, and they should
have some idea regarding the battery degradation.
Yes, it should. Other than the business end of things, it
may have been around, but the price-point would seem to have
made it a pretty hard sell back then.
Thanks. Were you noticing a lot of them being sold, or did
you just see them around once in a while?
Thanks for your explanation.
I think we’re to involved with the pucker factor, to let these
cells just go to a land fill. Your idea is another, and I
can see some ways to get rid of them so they don’t stay
in land fill also.
I noticed them slowly appearing on more and more rooftops - again, usually businesses or larger apartments though they did occasionally appear on single family home rooftops too. It wasn’t rapid, but the adoption rate was noticeable.
One thing I do recall from that time period, though, were the solar PV farms being announced - so those will be a large contributor to defunct panel disposal problems at this point, as we’re now 30 years on...
The blades are coming from China. Why do you think Canada will accept blades for disposal on Canadian soil??
Well the blades the jackasses were getting in Arizona when I was there were from Canada. Sorry I upset you.
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