Not sure where any claims were made in my post on production levels. Since you are quoting my post, can you please point what was wrongly posted?
Again, Please point out the non-quantitative part in my post.
And what has my post to do with electric cars ? I drive a model x, if it makes any difference.
That’s the problem. You didn’t give any figures on production. Specifically, the relative amount of silicon used to make solar panels vs that for other things, like window glass.
Your entire post was non-quantitative. You didn’t give a single number. That’s what “quantity” (the root of “quantitative”) means.
As far as the EV issue: many who oppose them make misleading statements like yours to make it seem like EVs are just as, if not more, polluting than ICEVs. It’s called FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
What dtilque said. Surely you’ve experienced this as an EV owner. Someone comes to you with a gotcha remark like “Did you KNOW that your CAR is powered by COAL? Your car isn’t any better than my giant TRUCK!” It’s easy to make claims like this when leaving off the numbers. It’s also completely meaningless, because magnitude matters. A Model X pollutes less than a truck even when powered by coal. And since not all electricity comes from coal, a Model X is typically much more efficient than a truck.
Everything pollutes to some extent. There’s no way around having some impact on the environment. Bringing up the downsides of green technology without putting them in perspective just serves as propaganda.
Ooh, I don’t often get to gush about this stuff, so forgive me if I excitedly overshare a bit…
Like Chronos, Wesley, and beowulff have already said, the energy payback time on PV is really short these days, like 4 years or less. (The financial payback time is also great, often less than 7 years or so).
Another way of looking at it is EROEI: energy return on energy invested, or how many times more energy the system will make through its expected lifetime than it took to manufacture it. Solar isn’t great in this regard, but it doesn’t necessarily matter because its fuel source (the sun) is relatively unlimited and clean vs fossil fuels that take thousands of years to replenish, and produces a lot of pollution once you do unleash all that energy (by burning them).
This sort of thing in general is called a lifecycle analysis, and they’re a critical part of shaping energy policy (well, for sane administrations). They range from incredibly complex to horrifyingly byzantine, depending on where you set the system boundaries (do you count the factories that build the vehicles that mine silica? do you count the e-waste that gets shipped to China and then dumped into rivers?).
It’s also useful for looking at climate change impacts, as measured by greenhouse gas emissions per kilowatt-hour (normalized to CO2). It’s in that sense that renewables and nuclear are much cleaner than fossil fuels. However, these don’t take into account other non-climatic impacts on environment or human health, such as radiation/nuclear waste, large dams’ impacts on hydrological and human communities, the toxicity of mining/refining/producing different things, the difficulty of recycling/disposal, etc.
For example, one big problem with renewables is storage: how to store electricity generated during productive times so that it can still be used at night or when the wind isn’t blowing. Two common solutions are batteries (the Tesla model) or pumped hydro storage (using electricity to pump water into a reservoir, then slowly drain it back through a turbine when needed). Some solar generators, instead of using photovoltaics, use sunlight to directly heat/melt some fuel, like a molten salt, that can stay hot long after the sun is down (and continue generating power). You can also apply a lifecycle analysis to this problem: In one study, pumping water is more than 20x more efficient than using batteries. There are people trying to integrate storage into EROEI comparisons, but I’m not familiar with them.
Another problem is that electricity generation is only about 28% of US greenhouse gas emissions, so even if you went 100% solar, that’s less than a third of US energy use. The other 66% (transportation, industry, agriculture, etc.) can’t always use electricity directly, such as with electric cars also needing a power delivery infrastructure that isn’t completely there yet, or plastics that require some sort of petroleum feedstock, or synthesizing fertilizers.
There is no energy source that’s entirely pollution free, but using LCAs is a cool way of looking at these questions from a systems perspective, holistically and in context in apples-to-apples comparisons, instead of from single sensationalized (or outright falsified) headlines.
My solar panels are 5 years old. For every one of those years their yield has been more than the previous year (most of it within normal variation, one big step increase for the third year due to less shadow).
I’d say that alone thoroughly debunks the rumor.
My uncle had a solar panel for 30 years. Its production towards the end was the same as when it was new (ZERO percent degradation), with the exception of a crack that happened at some point where it had a step reduction.
Here is an account of a guy who tested his 30-year old solar panel and also found ZERO degradation. The 30-year old panel worked 10% better than spec (due to circumstance at the time of the test).
Solar panels last forever.
On second thought, it’s clear where these rumors come from.
While good quality solar panels last forever, there is certainly no shortage of bad and/or cheap and/or poorly made solar panels in the world.
Also there are many instances of bad installations of solar panels. In some countries with attractive state subsidies, I hear they even have roaming gangs going door-to-door convincing people to buy expensive solar installations in order to collect the subsidies. Those will not use good quality solar panels nor good installation practices. You’d be lucky if they last three years. And no subsidy to repair them after they fail!
Finally, since few other things last as long as solar panels, you will see installations where the solar panels “failed” due to some other component failing. EEVBlog had a video where his top quality solar installation failed after only five years IIRC. Turns out, it was due to a circuit breaker installed in the roof that had been completely corroded away due to moisture ingress.