By Robert Bradley Jr.
“This is where the next frontier of solar energy lies—not in installing the next 100GW—it’s rescuing the first 100GW.” – Cesar Barbosa (below)
And you thought that owning a Tesla was ecological …. Imagine that solar roof that now needs attention with the installer AWOL. The solar industry is about to become the least popular in the U.S. with hundreds of thousands of disappointed customers.
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Cesar Barbosa is busy in a hot new field–solar decommissioning. And repowering too if the tax credit is still there.
“As the founder of NuLife Power Services,” he states, “I’m proud to lead a nationally recognized company specializing in Repowering, Removal & Reinstallation, and Decommissioning for aging solar assets across North America.”
For me, it’s not just about revitalizing solar systems—it’s about building a strong workforce through solid leadership and investing in people who are driven to make a lasting impact in renewable energy.
The name NuLife reflects our mission: giving aging solar systems—and the teams behind them—a chance to shine.
He adds:
My solar company helps clients manage complex end-of-life challenges, specializing in residential portfolio repairs and commercial repowering. My consulting business empowers business owners and managers to unlock their inner champion through a Christian lens.
Busted Sunnova has thousands of customers under 25-year contracts in California, where Barbosa works. What happens to them? And as other solar companies bite the dust … Removing solar panels is and will be a big business indeed.
Warning! Solar Waste Ahead!
In a recent social media post, Barbosa warned:
A bold prediction no one wants to hear: Half of all commercial solar systems installed before 2016 will be underperforming or non-operational by 2030.
The solar industry is obsessed with the future.
Cutting-edge panels (bigger is better). Sleek batteries. Dazzling projections for new installs.
But here’s the reality we can’t afford to ignore: a silent crisis unfolding on rooftops across America—a crisis I’ve been tackling firsthand since 2012, traveling the country with SunPower to address some of the industry’s most pressing system failures.
Across the country, tens of thousands of rooftop solar systems—once hailed as the clean energy revolution—are quietly decaying. Not because the technology failed, but because the industry did. We rushed to install. We cut corners. We promised 25 years of performance… and delivered systems that can’t make it past 10.
He continues:
Here’s what’s killing them:
Inverters are dying—many are already out of warranty, with no replacements available.
Wiring and electrical infrastructure that was never designed for 25+ years of exposure.
Install quality? Forget it—an army of barely trained crews built the boom, and now we’re paying the price.
Maintenance? There was no plan. Just a contract, a handshake, and a hope it would all work out.
This is not just an engineering issue—it’s a financial one. Underperforming assets are generating less revenue than forecasted, while increasing the risk of electrical faults, fire hazards, and insurance claims.
And here’s the kicker: almost no one is ready to deal with this wave of system failures. Asset managers, facility owners, and even EPCs are discovering that repowering, remediation, or decommissioning is far more complex and expensive than expected.
This is where the next frontier of solar energy lies—not in installing the next 100GW—it’s rescuing the first 100GW.
Revitalization. Repowering. Responsible end-of-life planning. The question isn’t whether it’s coming. It’s whether we have the guts to face it. Are we going to keep pitching the dream—or finally clean up the mess we left behind?
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The problem with solar is the simple fact that solar can’t produce usable energy “When It’s Needed” during peak use time so it must be stored. Solar really means Solar Plus Battery. Solar is really good for two things… Running desktop calculators AND recharging Batteries. For utility use though those Batteries are HYUGE, damned expensive and potentially volatile from thermal runaway.
Rooftop solar is pretty good for recharging a powerwall battery to run your house but, in the summer I use 45KWh per day so would need a system that included not only 45KWh of storage but a solar recharging system capable of providing that same 45KWh during the 4 hour solar prime time … 10am – 2pm AND a guarantee that the sun would always shine sufficiently every day…yeah riiiight.
I have always contended that the model was wrong. Diesel electric is the right approach.
The battery powers the electric generator and the battery is recharged, constantly.
This business of using inverters is inefficient. The switchover required to have battery stand in for solar is inefficient. The simplest solution generally is the best, but that is not how it has been pursued.
Do not misunderstand. I do not view grid scale solar or wind as viable. Wind mills and solar voltaic have some nice niche applications, but beyond a golf cart here and maybe an off the grid house there, nothing of any kind of scale.
We are obsessed with creating monuments. That is what the misnamed “farms” are. Monuments to stupidity.
“inefficient” is better than impossible. For a while you could buy a stack of solar calculators at the dollar store.
I was being kind using that word.
They are “Farms” in the traditional sense though. You plant Wind Turbines and fields of Solar Panels and grow Subsidy Payments…Subsidy Farms
Spot on.
For the right price, intermittent would make sense, even with the disadvantages you accurately describe. Maybe some day – I hope it’s not a nuclear fusion perma-future.
Exactly. I looked into solar on two separate occasions over a 15 year span in CO where there supposedly 300+ days of sunshine. No difference in cost to install, operate and no increase in life expectancy, Hence, no economic value or ROI to justify the upfront costs. In AZ now, might try again, but not likely. The foam insulation which was just $3000 over fiber glass insulation and already seeing a difference in the house on a cold and hot days.
This is all rubbish too… Solar does produce energy when it’s needed – I have a 12kW solar system, built it myself, and I use the electricity throughout the day, and have 15kWh of batteries for night time. As for “running desktop calculators”, yes, sure, my 2 x 5kW inverters can only put out 10kW of power, how will I cope? The batteries are not “volatile from thermal runaway”, because they use LiFePo4, which doesn’t suffer from thermal runaway like EV batteries do.
What is this rubbish about “the 4 hour solar prime time – 10am – 2pm”? My batteries start charging about an hour after sunrise, when the solar panel output exceeds the background use in my house, and in the Summer, by 11am my 15kWh batteries are fully charged, then I can run anything I want – hot water, air conditioner on 24/7, etc. If I was able to export (my inverters are incapable of this), I could export 50kWh or more for four months of the year.
But I totally agree that in the Winter, solar is next to useless, in the U.K. The output can be dire – one day I only generated 1.5kWh – from 12kW of solar panels!
While your batteries can charge in the run up of solar (8am – 10am) as well as dropoff (2pm – 4pm) you get nothing useful between 5pm and 7am and your peak usefulness (anywhere near nameplate capacity) IS 10am – 2 pm local time.
Having enough solar to run air conditioning on a sunny afternoon has some justification….expensive though….
That is why so many UK folks go to Spain for the winter.
Birds flying south!
“This is all rubbish too… Solar does produce energy when it’s needed.”
“But I totally agree that in the Winter, solar is next to useless, in the U.K.”
So the takeaway from this is that energy is not needed in the UK in winter. I disagree.
Mr. jtom: An excellent takedown, my compliments. I wonder why solar enthusiasts step on their own … sentence?
You could also show his contradiction like this:
“Solar does produce energy when it’s needed.”
“have 15kWh of batteries for night time”
So, not only does he not need energy in the winter, he doesn’t need it at night either. Brilliant! Myself, I need energy both at night and in the winter.
Steve,
you are looking inward,to your own situation.What solar does is distort grid input requirements, this can be relatively benign, if there is not too much of it but when it swamps the grid as it does in some very sunny areas requires a second back up generation source, running all the time, sometimes at wastefull low output but necessary to pick up the plummeting solar output as the sun goes down but the load remains or increases.
This is a crazy way to run a grid. Dump the solar.
A final point, the economics of personal solar is only posible due to the renewables on the grid increasing unit cost to the householder quite significantly, .i.e. if we did not connect renewables to a grid solar would become uneconomic.
Distortion of grid is case of On Grid solar systems without batteries. Then you have intermittency of seconds, 20s of full sunshine, pushing energy to grid, following 20s of zero production, sucking from grid. Steve has system with 15kWh battery what is I guess more than day of energy reserve for him. This is making intermittency of 1 day, what is easily manageable and predicable in the grid. Even nuclear power plants can respond with such intermittency.
Peter,
I’m sorry you do not seem to comprehend what I said:-
“plummeting solar output as the sun goes down but the load remains or increases.”
We are talking gigawatt figures here and conventional generators are essentially going from low output and flooring the throttle to try and keep up as solar output disappears.
We are evidently on different waves here. I’m saying that home solar system with batteries is not putting any strain on grid generators in night. Does not matter how many of them you put on the houses, it will not increase nightly energy needs.
What you are describing are On Grid systems without battery, where during lunchtime it is covering 100% of energy needs, but evening and night production is 0 and generators are starting.
This will not happen with systems which have at least 1 day battery energy reserves.
So, what happens when a storm system comes by and there is no sun for a couple of days?
what are you talking about? I made 17 KWh of usable electricity last week with my mini array. A mere $1500 up front is giving me back $2.55 per week.
dead serious. (it’s an experiment)
That gives you an 11-year payback if there are no maintenance costs and you don’t charge for your time . Do you think that You’ll get that power rate for more than a decade?
that assumes that 1) my $100 grid tie microinverter lasts the whole time which is unlikely and consumes almost 1 year of “profit” and 2) i will always be around to cover the cells with a blanket when the hail gets big enough.
You are assuming no winter season?
So an 11.3 year time until your $1500 experiment pays for itself, assuming you have the same good sunlight conditions 100% of the time to produce at least 17 KWh per week.
Living in the tropics, I’m probably in the best possible place to benefit from solar. My electricity use, especially for cooling, is almost perfectly aligned with solar energy. When it’s hot, I need to cool.
My ROI for solar power would be between 10 and 15 years. Probably similar if I bought a battery and associated inverter etc too. By then it would probably need significant maintenance and/or replacement.
No thanks. I’ll save my money and invest it in something with a better return.
“The problem with solar is the simple fact that solar can’t produce usable energy “When It’s Needed” during peak use time so it must be stored.”
And yet plants have managed to survive on solar power for over a billion years. In addition to which they provided enough surplus energy for dinosaurs, elephants, blue whales etc to thrive and grow. Plus of course before we started using nuclear energy all of our energy requirements were met using stored energy from plants. So it seems odd that solar panels which are 20% efficient can produce using energy when plants do so while being only 3% efficient.
Plants are power plants, in a sense, but can your backyard trees power your television, refrigerator, computer, and lights?
what do you think coal is? It is just the remains of plants (mostly trees) and coal can easily power your appliances. If plants can do this with an efficiency of less than 4% then solar panels can do it with an efficiency of over 20%.
Yes, coal can do these things but in GB we aren’t allowed to dig it up and use it.
Absolutely not problem. Steam engine plus generator and little piece of wood, grass, shrub can give you electric energy.
plants have managed to survive on solar power for over a billion years
Plants are evolved (over that billion years) to utilize “solar power” when it is available – i.e. during daytime hours. Modern electrical systems are not. It’s not even close to a valid comparison – you’re comparing apples to transformers.
Plants also store solar energy to use when the sun doesn’t shine. And do that so well that they have generated a surplus that powers the entire animal kingdom. So if they can do so it while the efficiency of photosynthesis is less than 2% then surely we can figure out how to do the same with using solar panels with an efficiency of over 20%.
Again, you are comparing billions of years of natrual evolution to decades of technology. It is not even vaguely a valid comparison.
Do plants use batteries to store their energy? Do our solar installations use cells to store their energy? They are not even close to being the same thing. The mechanisms of energy storage are completely different. Get back to me when we have perfected biochemical energy storage to match what plants have evolved.
Why would we want to have biochemical energy storage when we have batteries. Batteries have storage efficiencies about 85% for a charging/discharging cycle and produce electricity that can be directly used to power electrical devices. Any biochemical storage would be considerably less efficient since the only way it could be used to produce electricity would be to burn it which is at best 20% efficient.
So again if plants can manage to use solar power to grow, produce a surplus, etc it seems very far fetched to claim that we can’t do the same using solar cells and batteries which are at least 10x more efficient.
And apart from nuclear energy essentially all of humanity’s power needs are provided for by plants in one form or another and the rest (wind, hydro etc) are solar powered. So claiming that solar panels can’t work is clearly nonsense.
it seems very far fetched to claim that we can’t do the same
It seems more far fetched to claim that we can replicate the result of “a billion years” of evolution with a few decades of technology.
It seems far fetched that we could replicate how plants take that energy and use it – to grow, for one thing – with technology that requires upkeep and maintenance. Are there solar plants and batteries that are capable of not only maintaining themselves, but also growing?
It is truly astounding that you continue to think this is even a vaguely reasonable comparison.
“It seems more far fetched to claim that we can replicate the result of “a billion years” of evolution with a few decades of technology.”
Have you ever been in a plane? Or a boat? Clearly we can replicate birds flying and fish swimming with a few decades of technology. And not only that we can fly higher and faster than any bird and speed through the water faster than any fish.
Plants also need constant upkeep and maintenance. The second law of thermodynamics applies to them as much as it does to solar cells and batteries. Plants are also under constant attack from animals and fungi and have to spend resources to protect themselves. All of which happens using solar power. And if plants can manage it despite being an order of magnitude less efficient than solar cells it means that it is possible for us to do the same.
Clearly we can replicate birds flying and fish swimming with a few decades of technology.
With similar efficiency?
Plants also need constant upkeep and maintenance.
So plants don’t grow without human intervention?
I think this conversation has been beaten into the ground at this point, let’s move on.
A lot of plants die or go dormant every fall.
or finally clean up the mess we left behind
Says it all.
Same will apply to wind turbines. !
The End is Nigh! 🙂
That’s what windmill manufacturers should be asked:
forever junk
do you really want to build forever, forever junk
My inverter stopped reporting its output. No LED display and no internet output. It is still under warranty. The installers say it’s not their warranty, they just sold it to me as part of a system and installed it. It didn’t fall off the wall, so its not their problem. Unfortunately, the manufacturer went bankrupt, which is also not their problem.
So tough luck for me for saving the earth. All that talk about “joining the solar family” and “rest assured, we will always be there for your service” was all a bunch of hokum.
I now own a brick under warranty attached to my wall.
Sadness is companies with 10-year survival expectations and 20-year warranty obligations.
You can buy a new inverter for £500 on Ebay – 11kW. Get an electrician to install it. Simple.
Mr. jones: Thanks for explaining the warranty to us. You sound like you’re trying to sell solar, but your self-built system only understands the “ufixit” warranty.
Yep and it will come with the 1-2 warranty once it’s out the door it’s too late and most of those cheap junk inverters won’t make 5 years. Then he will be back in exactly the same situation again.
If you factor in the electrician and replacement inverter cost every 5 years, I suspect the whole installation costs money not saves you money.
I bought new one under 2 year warranty 5kW for 540E.
Doonman,
if you believe that you are saving the earth, its due to the very mistaken information being given, as is the case for a great many people.
I can’t know if I’m saving the earth or not. All of my CO2 emission savings records are lost.
Of course, since Jerry Brown outlawed selling my carbon credits for my home installed solar system in California, it really doesn’t matter if I know anyway.
But it was fun to use to tease my liberal friends who all have saved zero emissions while calling for more emission reductions.
20-year wind lasts 13 years, so 25-year solar at 10 years sounds about right. In a sane world this junk would be illegal instead of subsidized. We are long past the time that the mandates, tax credits, low interest loans, accelerated depreciation allowances, and more should be transferred to nuclear. A proven technology that lasts at least 60 years (unless forced into premature closure by subsidized sunshine and breezes nuisance “power” (or simply end the war on plant food).
But how can we save the planet without sacrificing?? Salvation is always expensive, right?
While I agree that nuclear is a better solution
Nuclear lasts 60 years because people maintain it
Rooftop solar was sold to many people who don’t
How do you maintain rooftop solar? What’s needed?
A guy with a ladder.
Right, but what’s the guy with the ladder going to do to maintain the solar? Does it really need anything? It’s not like maintaining your lawn. 🙂
Well, for starters, differential expansion and contraction of the components is going to cause things like connectors to loosen; and UV light will degrade plastic cable-insulation. The panels themselves, if out of sight on a flat roof, may well have suffered weather damage without you knowing. The list goes on…
It’s like any piece of equipment – it needs checking over on a regular basis if it is to keep functioning efficiently.
Most people want to avoid complexity in their lives. Like Thoreau said, “simplify, simplify”. We want to have our homes plugged into the grid- and let the power company engineers have all these worries to provide us with dependable, low cost energy. Who has time to do everything we need to do- plus regularly checking on our solar panels. If someone gets pleasure out of that and they have the time and skill, fine, but the rest of us don’t want it. All these issue to keep track of remind me of maintenance of my pickup and car- change oil, rotate tires, get inspection, etc.
I’m sweeping dust sometimes. Like once per year. But only on my flat roof panels, my main panels are not touched for 3 years, still overperforming nameplate by 10% when it is cold sunny and windy.
Keep the panels clean. Have the install done so wiring, connectors, and components are always shaded from UV light exposure and protected from rain and snow. Most installs at best rely on the shade from the panels for that, and ‘micro’ inverters are typically attached directly to the backs of the panels, where they can bake in the heat that conducts through. Panels also need to be inspected periodically for damage. Ones with glass fronts can crack or delaminate. The PV cells are sandwiched between glass and the backing in a clear gooey substance. That protects them from oxidation.
In early PV panels that clear goo wasn’t UV resistant and it would turn yellow over time, reducing the conversion efficiency.
PV panels all have an output degradation curve. In the first 5 years they typically lose 10% to 15% of their output. After that there’s a sharp reduction in how much they degrade. Over the rest of the lifetime of the panels it’s very little.
So when you install a PV system you want to over-capacity it by at least 15% and consider that “extra” as non-existent, then never expand your load over the total rated capacity minus 15%. Then in 5 years you won’t find your house short on solar power.
Or you can save some money and space by buying used panels that have baked in the sun for five years. Then you’ll only need to over-capacity the install by around 5% because that’s about what they’ll degrade over the next 20 years. However, 5 year old panels right now will most likely be 2×3 foot 100 Watt panels. New panels that size are more efficient and can kick out considerably more than 100 Watts, though as already noted, you should always knock off 15% on the capacity.
With all the other things we have to worry about in our homes- plumbing, wiring, things breaking and needing fixing, ad infinitum- seems to me most people wouldn’t want to add all that worry having their own solar panels. They’d rather let the “power company” have those worries with a reliable dependable power generation.
Problem here is that “power company” is not yours, they can switch you off as they want. They can have technical outages too.
There is no difference if you pay power company or technician which will check your system regularly.
But it is YOUR system, nobody can switch it off for you.
Yuh, but without subsidies, my own power company would be far more expensive. As for paying a tech- when I need a plumber, they’re now about $150/hour around here. Electricians a bit cheaper. What will a solar tech guy charge? I just want cheap energy and to not think about it- too many other things to think about.
It is same as with gas furnace, air conditioning, etc, you still need some 150$/hour guy for maintenance. But it is working somehow, those appliances are designed to work 10 years without touching. (If you are lucky)
Right- forgot about my annual maintenance on my oil furnace. It takes the guy about half an hour and I think the charge is just under $200. When I owned a natural gas furnace on my first house it didn’t need annual servicing. It was installed by my plumber uncle 30 years before I bought the house and worked perfectly.
You stand on the solar voltaic cells and shine a flashlight on them?
I’ve had solar for over a decade now. Maybe I’ve been lucky but the only maintenance I’ve had to do is a roughly twice a year cleaning to keep the cells producing as much power as possible.
The only maintenance for solar is to clean the dust and bird poop off on a regular basis.
There is nothing you can do to protect or repair individual cells, or your power electronics.
Oconee Nuclear Station (SC) has just been licensed to operate for 80 years.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.ans.org/news/article-6908/nrc-approves-subsequent-license-renewal-for-oconee/&ved=2ahUKEwjBuvPlztqMAxV2GtAFHZjxChsQFnoECAsQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0EON0XIImfmmpS1gLQCNDY
“The ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus’ paradox, is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The paradox is most notably recorded by Plutarch in Life of Theseus from the late first century.
When I was involved in the production and operation of torpedoes for our navy the only bit signifying the torpedo was the handbook. All the rest were spare parts
I’ve still got my grandfather”s axe and it’s as good as new!
It’s only had three new handles and two new heads since he bought it..
My grandad had an axe like that.
Or. Better known as Trigger’s Broom from Fools and Horses 10 nandles and 20 heads in 15 years
80 years- interesting- about the same time we naked apes are licensed to operate- with a few lucky ones given an extension 🙂
A lot of nuclear shut down in New England. I don’t follow all the stories- but I bet few of them really had to be shut down.
The baseload reactors which have been shut down in New England have been the victims of a power market severely warped by wind and solar mandates combined with massive subsidies for wind and solar which hide their true costs from the power consumer. With appropriate upgrades, most of those reactors which were closed in New England in the last two decades could have had their lives extended to sixty years or more.
Actually I’m at 16 years on the solar panels that provide energy to my off-grid cabin. They are nominally rated at 195 watts each on an array rated 1755 watts. Early morning when the batteries are being charged the three arrays are all running at 1400- watts in full sunshine. Batteries typically are charged in 2 – 4 hours depending on what we are running in the cabin and separate home office our daughter works out of.
I know people in our off-grid area that have been out here for 30+ years and their panels are still producing 50 – 60% of rated capacity.
I use Canadian Solar for panels and haven’t had a single (27 panels) panel fail. I purchased a Xantrex, (now Schinder Electric), Inverter and it is still operating with no problem. Same with my charge controllers. More expensive but better made
Off-grid applications for solar have been employed to productive effect for decades by remote mines, cattle stations, military encampments, etc etc.
It’s thinking that rooftop solar panels are a replacement for urban utility scale generation & distribution systems is where the dysfunction begins and continues.
Charging EVs and providing HVAC don’t help, either.
You just made the point that PV solar’s best use case is in point of use applications. The most efficient, least cost way of implementing it is to install the right capacity for each individual user, as close as possible to where the power will be used.
It’s very inefficient to concentrate a huge amount of solar power conversion into a large area, combine it all into a few large wires, then send it out through the webwork of the existing “grid” to a large number of users who are using widely varying and constantly changing amounts of electricity.
That’s been workable with concentrated “point sources” of electricity like oil/gas/coal, nuclear, and hydro power plants that kick out many megawatts 24/7, essentially at the turn of a switch. The power goes right into the big main wires with minimal loss.
With large solar ‘farms’ the losses start immediately, right at the inverter on each panel. Every connection, every foot of wire takes away a tiny bit due to resistance. It’s taking a diffuse power source and “squeezing” it down for transport then spreading it out again.
The area of land coverage also introduces additional I^2*R losses due to wire resistance. Details matter.
Solar power never needed to be made illegal. Just letting it compete in an open fair market would sort out the winners. Solar would win where it is better. My solar is brilliant for summer daytime airconditioning. With (very expensive) battery it’s protection against rocketing power prices. So I think there would be a market for solar, and only those who wanted it would pay for it.
You are describing a valid niche application.
The problem is grid scale application with massive, ecologically destructive, arrays (aka farms).
But you knew this long before I posted.
I’m in SoCal, the only reason I have solar is to exploit the idiotic give away program that credits me 8x the fair market value for my surplus moderate temperature midday electrons. I had previously installed a new 25 year roof that I was confident would outlast me even with the panel invasion so it was win-win for me, but not for the general economy or non-solar rate payers.
Would dismantling and disposing of failed solar and windmills be considered “green jobs”?
Sure, why not? It takes plenty of green these days to get anyone to do anything.
If it’s too good to be true…
It obviously isn’t.
Fire
Air travel
Microwave oven
Internet
Radio communication
Useful things, what was your point?
they’re all good- and all have issues but not as many issues as “green” energy
There are a lot of valuable metals in solar panels. It’s cheaper than mining and refining them to smelt them and reclaim them.
Evidently, it’s not.
Are you sure?
Why don’t you give it a try and get back to us. 🙂
It is far from easy or cheap to extract those metals from spent solar panels.
Also, the new panels contain much less of those expensive metal materials (that’s how they drove the cost down). So they’re much harder to recycle.
I have not read anything on these solar panels having any economic through recycling. Grant there are using metals that could be recovered, but at what cost and would it be profitable?
no, it is not
There are valuable metals in solar panels. I challenge your contention that there are a lot of these metals in them. The contacts for each cell has maybe a few milligrams of precious metals. Then there are the wires that connect the cells and panels together. Maybe a pound for your average home sized array.
There’s maybe 20 to 30 pounds of iron in the brackets holding everything.
The materials that make up the cells themselves are not recoverable. They would have to be crushed, melted and chemically separated. Not enough material to justify the cost.
The bond wires shifted from gold to aluminum decades ago as were the lands.
The lands are sometimes gold, but mostly now aluminum.
The cost of extracting a few micrograms of aluminum will far exceed the value of the metal.
I heard the cost of recycling a solar panel is 2 to 3 times the cost of a new panel.
It is I have a collection of them and there are only a couple of recyclers who will take them in Australia.
Evidently no one caught the sarcasm.
Well, given the contentiousness of posts, it would be well advised in the future to employ a “/s” notation.
Solar voltaic cells are semiconductors. It is not trivial to recover even a measurable percentage of the non-silicon elements diffused in the wafer processing.
You make the claim. Now list the companies that are making an un-subsidized profit doing just that.
Only in your liberal/progressive imagination
We all knew this day would come, didn’t we?
Yep, All predictable and foreseeable if eyes and minds were open at the time.
No “day has come”, the article is bullshit. Modern solar panels are incredibly cheap, have guaranteed outputs for 25 years, i.e. you will lose maybe 10% over 25 years, which is amazing for an item that just sits there and produces electricity day in, day out, while exposed to all weathers, especially baking in the sun. Inverters are dirt cheap nowadays too, but most of you here haven’t got solar systems, or if you have, you didn’t build them yourselves, and don’t understand how they work, so you think they are a ‘magic box’.
The panels that are dying, also had guaranteed lifespans. None of them made it.
ROFL a solar panel that makes 25 years yet to see one. I have had solar installs for 15 years not a single original panel exists. You are going to need to replace them at 10 the only good part is the new panel will put out more power than the old for the same footprint.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA “guaranteed”. Let’s take bankrupt companies to court.
Sure, that’ll work.
“…have guaranteed outputs for 25 years”
Here in Colorado, with our frequency of hailstorms during the summer, a solar panel would be lucky to make it 25 months. Do the warranties cover weather events? If so, what is the total cost to the industry, economy, and environment?
Just do vertical installation of solar panels.
Fish, meet hook, line, and sinker. No bait needed.
Tell me again about those massive arrays in Oklahoma and Florida and elsewhere that were totally destroyed by weather.
have guaranteed outputs for 25 years
“guaranteed” how?
I’m sure my monstrous Windows 386 clone PC with dot matrix printer and rastering VGA monitor are near the bottom of the same decomposing pile by now.
Nailed it.
It will be payday for lawyers. But where did the money go? So who does one sue?
Al Gore
We have a lot of hail storms in Colorado Springs. We’ve had 3″ hail a few times in the last 15 years. What does this do to solar panels?
The same thing it does to car windshields and roofs
Utility scale power generation and distribution will always need a well-considered mix of generation fuels and devices, principally made up of those that can be relied upon for spinning reserve, and >80% uptime delivery of their rated output capacities.
So coal, gas, diesel, bio, hydro, nuclear are the go-to, tried & tested solutions.
Wind & solar + batteries can at times be handy for supplemental power contributions when weather and diurnal cycle conditions are favourable.
But just as old time wind-jammers used to have to catch the tides to navigate their way in & out of ports, modern ships have reliable, on-demand engines to ensure they can enter & leave ports safely, on-time as required.
Your wind & solar electricity generation technologies are the equivalent of wind-jammers relying on tide movements to use ports.
We’re way past those times now.
Love the sail boat analogy.
Maryland has solar farms. Those that enroll get cost deductions when the sun is shining otherwise pay baseload rates. That is exactly the approach that works, just as you described.
“end-of-life challenges”
wow, a new priesthood for dying solar systems!
I could have sworn the local astronomers were saying the solar system had at least 5 to 7 billion years left in it.
Did they guarantee the solar energy output for those billions of years?
/h
LOL, no surprise here, Having work on electronics for over 50 years and my experience with solar cells the project 20 year life time of a solar system was pure fantasy. When I moved to Arizona I look at solar and penciled it out. Since I did not accept the 20 year life time and put it down at 15 years the ROI did not work out, even with subsidies. When they sell these system the lies come fast, lifetime, maintenance and disposal are never in their play book. Grid storage is the number one lie, which I always call them on.
I did a research project in the 70s and predicted that in the ensuring decades solar voltaics would achieve the efficiencies we see today. It also included a reliability assessment and addressed Moore’s Law. It concluded that we would see improvements but we would still be bound to limited applications.
“A bold prediction no one wants to hear: Half of all commercial solar systems installed before 2016 will be underperforming or non-operational by 2030.”
A PREDICTION, not fact, just his OPINIONS. What does “underperforming” mean? Does it mean “giving out less electricity than when the solar panel was installed twenty years ago”? If so, then of course, ALL solar panels degrade by a fraction of a percent every year. Look at the environment they are in – baking in hot sun for hours every day in the Summer, freezing cold in the Winter, rained on for days at a time. Modern solar panels are amazing technology, and dirt cheap.
I like how he writes “underperforming OR non-operational”. There is (obviously) a HUGE difference between the two.
What is the “silent crisis” of which he speaks? Solar panels are now about half the price I paid just three years ago for mine. What’s this bullshit: “We promised 25 years of performance… and delivered systems that can’t make it past 10.”
Who is “we”? Which solar panels (which are all that matters, since inverters will inevitably stop working, and are now only £300 for a 5kW hybrid inverter in the U.K. – just search on Ebay.co.uk for “Solar inverter 48V”) aren’t making it past ten years of use? What a load of rubbish.
“Inverters are dying—many are already out of warranty, with no replacements available.”
WTF? You can plug any solar panels into any inverter, you just need to make sure you have the correct number in a string, so the voltage is high enough to work, and not too many, so you don’t exceed the maximum voltage the inverter can handle. “no replacements available” is a ridiculous and obvious LIE.
“Wiring and electrical infrastructure that was never designed for 25+ years of exposure.”
What? Where? What solar cable can’t cope with 25 years of “exposure”? Oh, the humanity. Hundreds of millions of homes have electric cables coming across telegraph poles, and they seem to stand up to the ‘exposure’.
“Install quality? Forget it—an army of barely trained crews built the boom, and now we’re paying the price.”
Yes, of course, because he says so, and he knows that EVERY solar installer was “barely trained”. This is just laughable.
This is one of the worst articles on Watts Up With That. You really need to start learning how solar installations work, look at the cost of new solar panels, inverters, and so on, and stop reprinting laughable rubbish which ISN’T HELPING YOUR CASE.
You really are desperate to preach the gospel.
Mr. jones: You are the one with a case.
Don’t know where you live but in Australia you can’t simply plug in an inverter as you declare you need an SAA license and an unrestricted electrical license to install one and I suspect it is because of accidents with gyro gear looses like you.
You can also only replace a panel with like for like unless you specifically know a lot about the panel grid layout because any in series need to have the same amperage output not something the average layman knows. Then you find the panel you bought 10 years ago is no longer made and so you have to replace a couple of panels.
I stated above I have had solar installations for 15 years not one has an original panel largely because usually if one gets a fault they are all in a state of decay or you can’t get the grid layout to work.
About all we are seeing from your post is your lack of understanding.
It is not so bad with replacing, you can use panel with higher current or voltage. If your system is 30V 10A, you can use 30V 15A panel in series, its maximum current will be limited to 10A.
just his OPINIONS
Opinions apparently based on his experience in the business he runs.
Story Tip: UN sets carbon tax on shipping in defiance of Trump threat
Also covered by Jo Nova
How does the UN plan on collecting this tax?
That’s what I was wondering.
How to start a trade war or pour fuel on one.
Tariffs bad, shipping tax good???
“shipping tax good !!!”
Especially if it flows to UN/far-leftist coffers. 😉
Where else could be the destination?
Ah. “Members of the International Maritime Organization” agreed to the UN suggestion. No information on how it is to be collected or for what use.
Nothing surprising here wind and solar can not compete with fossil fuel, hydro and nuclear, everybody knows that. If not for government interference i.e. incentives and mandates we wouldn’t even be talking about this.
Here’s another example of overestimating the demand for and performance of green technology. Like EVs, solar power sources were never tested long enough to see whether they would remain viable over the long term or how long they would last when exposed to everyday weather fluctuations. Yet as long as governments were willing to use tax revenue to subsidize an unproven product, there were enough takers to get the solar bandwagon rolling. Now that the wheels have come off, it’s obvious there’s little left to salvage.
Perhaps the rural Indian peasants are right. They use unsaleable solar panels for building chicken sheds.
The great thing about rooftop solar is no one else knows if it’s working or not. It’s perfect for virtue signalling at a distance.
You could paint a couple of sheets of plywood black and glue them to the roof.
Much cheaper.
It’s reminiscent of the home satellite dish craze in the 1980s but much worse.
There comes a time when good men cannot walk past the stench holding their noses any longer-
Queensland council abandons EV charger installation plan after ‘dirty nickel’ media report
The EV con: Spotlight investigation into the deadly side of electric vehicles sold in Australia | 7NEWS
Let the demos begin with commie slave cars and their Beijing masters controlling the software (no shootings burnings or vandalism please despite the moral outrage watermelons)
This seems to be that buying from China is aiding and abetting crime.
Rooftop solar means roof penetration. This opens the door to moisture ingress through the penetrations. I never got beyond this possibility when thinking about rooftop solar. Roof repairs are expensive. Beyond that I never have worshiped at the church of free energy. Carnival barkers have never had much attraction to me.
There are already penetrations.
That aside having cricket failures (chimney) and other roofing issues lead to water damage I fully appreciate your point.
That is case with asphalt tiles, mostly used in US. In Europe most common roofs are metal, concrete and terracotta roof tiles. With metal you use clips from outside on strips where metal sheets connects, with roof tiles you have solar hooks which are going under tile and connects to wood structure.
I understand tattoo removal is also big business. Another installation that few consider the long-term implications of.
Meantime my rooftop solar system has already 3 years, created 11MWh and returned me 1760E, while it costs 4500E. All this with heavy subsidized electricity for 0.16E/kWh and solar terrible European winter.
From start of March till October I’m enjoying my electrically heated hot tub, because on sunny days I have surplus and can afford heat it.
If I was building my system today, it would cost me 2500E.
This is ROI around 4 years.
With careful planning you can get to 2,5 year.