Mastodawn

Solar panel waste is not something you need to concern yourself with. Even if people are upgrading panels after 10 years this waste is insignificant compared to sooooooooo many things. Recycling materials in solar panels is probably a good idea, but it's not something to stop you getting panels today.

If waste is a concern for you, you should be switching to solar panels since they produce so little waste compared to other energies like coal. Like hundreds of times less. You probably should be caring more about, tires, mattresses, single use plastics, vapes, the packaging everything comes before solar panels.

(This brought to you by ABC fearmongering)

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Alex von Kitchen Apr 1

@xssfox wouldn't panels removed after 10 years go to a second hand market?

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Erica Briony.Apr 1

@Dangerous_beans @xssfox I think there's laws against using second hand ones, which is part of the problem.. pretty sure you can't even upgrade by adding more later without replacing them all.. could be wrong on that but i know there's some wasteful laws about systems

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1.3.6.1.4.1.61513 Apr 1

@steadilyebbing @Dangerous_beans not sure about laws but from personal experience, it's actually kind of annoying to repurpose them. When getting them off the roof its easy to crack them. But yes, part of the plan I believe is to have somewhere that can take these panels in, test / validate them, then repurpose them.

The panels are so cheap now however that it doesn't really make money since to mess around with repurposing old panels when much of the cost is in cabling, install, inverter ect...

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Witton says FUCK ICE

@steadilyebbing @Dangerous_beans

This is something I used to work on a bit in previous jobs

@xssfox is spot on here, lots more value in 'balance of system' components vs panels, but there's definitely a nascent second hand market emerging

Also a few companies working on how to economically recycle end of life panels, like Solar Cycle and PV Cycle

Once the first gen solar farms start coming offline then there will be enough volume for the recycling/reuse markets to really scale