Quote (Knoppie @ 8 Dec 2018 15:15)
Hmm I forgot to aswer here:
The engineer makes a point that there are additional energy consuming processes that are not often incorporated in calculations. I've basically doubled the production carbon footprint with those <5 years. Which seems reasonable for a no to low maintenance product that's being mass produced. I'm pretty sure the operating energy needed to use solar panels was initially 3x production energy needed 10-15 years ago, but with things progressing, future panels make use of the already streamlined processes and installed infrastructure. Solar panels will not be installed/planned in the future like they are now, but just incorporated in the new buildings as being part of the normal process, designed to make it fast and easy.
Still the article is interesting, he has a point, but seems to exaggerate: He starts of with using the most energy expensive panel to produce 10 years ago, costing over 4x the energy needed to make one today. That's ~half of the energy the panel returns during it's lifetime. Using that as starting point, one can expect the engineer to have used rather high numbers on the additional processes that need energy. Rounding up the decline of panel efficiency over time etc. Interestingly I would have agreed with him 15 years ago.. But not in this time..
Now if we would want to globally do something about our global carbon footprint. -> Make solar panels in France/Spain and install them in China/Africa. It's gonna be shit for our local emission statistics, but at least 4x as efficient as we are doing now :D
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/04/how-sustainable-is-pv-solar-power.html/e and storage is shit as it loses 25%+ efficiency. But when solar and wind fail to supplement each other for a long time, you need alternatives.
Perhaps things get better if we can charge our second hand refurbished car battery in our home on a dc panel on top of our home, fueling our dc electrinic devices (the conversion ac/dc and back again is a pain). I'm kinda interested to see what kind of role the batteries are gonna play, as they will be mass produced, and operable for quite some time aften taken our of a car. I've already outlined flexible refueling cars at grid surpluses, it comes without a loss in efficiency and works only on short terms 1-3 days. But just like any type of alternative durable energy tech, every bit helps in the end.
batteries/electric storages only have a certain lifespan, after an amount of loading cycles they are done and need to recycled
the available power also goes down dramatically
i would never put a second hand battery in my home and use it, way too dangerous
these things are not built to be refurbished and you cant just undo the chemical and physical damage
there are a lot of things in physics, where the performance potential in general is heavily limited by measurements and thresholds
batteries are among them until somebody can reinvent that technology with some groundbreaking discoveries
unfortunately its an article behind a paywall, that i cant post for you to read, but several corporations here have made a suggestion for the wind energy transportation problem, that i was talking about earlier
short story: dont build huge transmission lines, but use the electricity to produce hydrogen instead
that would be so much better