04-11-2019, 03:46 PM
(03-28-2019, 11:46 AM)mikesez Wrote: [ -> ](03-27-2019, 08:03 PM)MalabarJag Wrote: [ -> ]Doing 50% of the things in the GND will never be a win. It takes as much energy to make a solar panel as you get from one in it's lifetime. There's a reason that the manufacturers of wind and solar generators don't use the wind or solar generators they've already created to make more of them.
Wow.
You might actually really believe that.
Wow.
Exactly.
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(03-28-2019, 01:05 PM)mikesez Wrote: [ -> ](03-28-2019, 12:23 PM)B2hibry Wrote: [ -> ]He's actually correct if you take the solar industry as a whole. The industry is not quite yet a net producer but close. Stanford University is just one offering of studies that speak to this. Because panels don't provide electricity as a stand alone unit, you also must consider the other equipment necessary like batteries, charge controls, wiring, etc. The PV industry is close but not there yet. Additionally, equipment may need to be purchased multiple times. The average lifecycle for a solar panel is roughly 20 years with drops in efficiency as they degrade and the supporting electrical will degrade well before then.
I would have to look at it.
I mean if you're going to include all the energy that the workers at the solar panel factory used to get to work, and include all the energy spent getting those solar panels from the factory to the job site, I could see analysis getting a bit pessimistic, but I don't think those are the numbers to look at.
The reason a solar panel factory wouldn't use its own panels is because they need a source that's always available at a high capacity whenever they need it, and there's no good reason for them to buy a bunch of batteries, unless the always-on always available power they currently rely on suddenly becomes very expensive.
We invest in solar and wind power generation to avoid burning additional fuel. And these investments break even without subsidies, lately. But until there are dramatic advancements in energy storage technology or dramatic increases in the cost of fossil fuel, it will still make sense for us to invest in fossil fuel burning plants to produce electricity on demand.
How much energy spent to burn coal vs spent to construct a solar panel. Seems to be an interesting equation.
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