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how much power does it take to produce a solar panel?

  • Thread starter Tomasz Chmielewski
  • Start date
T

Tomasz Chmielewski

Jan 1, 1970
0
From time to time, I read such a statement somewhere in newspapers,
articles etc.:


I hate to cut this down but a lot more energy went into producing
this than it will ever produce itself. I think people are too
easily tricked into thinking they are doing something good for the
environment.


Is it true that a solar panel, generally, takes more power to make than
it will ever produce?
 
E

Eeyore

Jan 1, 1970
0
Tomasz said:
From time to time, I read such a statement somewhere in newspapers,
articles etc.:

I hate to cut this down but a lot more energy went into producing
this than it will ever produce itself. I think people are too
easily tricked into thinking they are doing something good for the
environment.

Is it true that a solar panel, generally, takes more power to make than
it will ever produce?

Depends where it ends up getting sited for one thing. I too would like to
know the true energy 'cost' of making a panel. Every single part of it.

Graham
 
C

Cosmic

Jan 1, 1970
0
Tomasz Chmielewski ha scritto:
Is it true that a solar panel, generally, takes more power to make than
it will ever produce?

it was used to be.
nowadays it isn't so anymore, both with silicon panels and Thin films :)
 
M

Mauried

Jan 1, 1970
0
Tomasz Chmielewski ha scritto:


it was used to be.
nowadays it isn't so anymore, both with silicon panels and Thin films :)

I often wonder why people ask this question.
You dont for example see people asking whether it takes more energy to
produce a wind turbine or a nuclear power plant or a wave farm than
they will ever produce.
And is the question a sensible one anyway.
Wouldnt a better question be
Does a Solar panel make more energy (measured in todays dollar value)
than it will ever produce (measured in the same dollar value).
try and get a sensible answer to that one.
 
E

Eeyore

Jan 1, 1970
0
Mauried said:
I often wonder why people ask this question.
You dont for example see people asking whether it takes more energy to
produce a wind turbine or a nuclear power plant or a wave farm than
they will ever produce.

We know it's less. Certainly for the first two, assuming the wind turbine is
sensibly sited.

And is the question a sensible one anyway.
Wouldnt a better question be
Does a Solar panel make more energy (measured in todays dollar value)
than it will ever produce (measured in the same dollar value).
try and get a sensible answer to that one.

In dollar value in most places, NEVER.

Graham
 
You're right, there is considerable embodied energy in a solar panel,
however, as other contributors have said, this is reducing and is down
to less than 5 years. A lot of the embodied energy is in the frames.

I'm particularly interested in the First Solar product which is a
thin-film glass sandwich. It's apparently 100% recyclable and even
has its collection costs built into the price. Even the cadmium
telluride is collected for reuse.

The advertising blurb says it's less than US$1 per watt and it's
frameless (which removes the aluminium's embodied component).

I believe it's only a matter of time before it's integrated into every
large window facing north (in Australia).

They're geared up to supply world-wide

Mike
 
E

Erdeemal

Jan 1, 1970
0
Eeyore said:
We know it's less. Certainly for the first two, assuming the wind turbine is
sensibly sited.



In dollar value in most places, NEVER.

Graham

Graham you should update. Now on EBAY you can buy solar *cells* at
a bit less than US$1.00 per watt peak. Knowing that a watt peak
produces approximately 1 kWh per year in London (2.5 in sunny Sahara),
on 10 years it will provide you with kWh at US$0.10 . I pay my day
kilowatts at US$ 0.25 per kilowatt.

As I wrote two years ago here: "The dreamers are not the one who
think that solar energy will prevail, the dreamers are the one who
think they can stop it."

I too wrote that this will probably lead to a bank collapse :)
(due to all the changes implied).

I am the new Nostradamus :). I will not tell you what I see
for you :)

Erdy
 
M

Martin Riddle

Jan 1, 1970
0
Interesting I did a rough calculation that came out to 7years, just
using estimated costing from current panel pricing.
If I had used a southern insolation instead of 3.5hr it would had been
closer to 3 years.

Cheers
 
E

Eeyore

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ron said:
At least one of the papers used about 5 hrs, as an "average USA insolation
value".

Very optimistic if you mean by that 5 kWh /day.

The data's readily available.
http://www.apricus.com/html/insolation_levels_usa.htm

Only 4 of many locations listed make 5 or better in the CONUS.

3.5 - 4 would be nearer the mark ( anyone fancy averaging all those numbers )
and don't forget to consider population distribution vs location too as to how
effective it will be for how many people.

Not to mention different energy profile usage requirements vs time of the
year. NY does OK with an average 3.53 but that falls to 1.4 in December when
it's cold and you want heat.

Now something like one of these in say Arizona might do well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_solar_power_tower
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_updraft_tower

PV solar will always be most effective in the Tropics.

Graham
 
E

Eeyore

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ron said:
No, I mean 5 kWh/M2/day

m2 actually but that was what I meant.

That is a rather limited subset of the 1400+ monitoring stations.

Are you deliberately suggesting they missed all the hot spots ? Promoters of PV
solar will naturally tend to inflate their figures and fail to disclose losses.

The average of the limited apricus data is 4.095 kWh/M2/day. It took less
than 60 seconds to import the data into Excel and compute an average.

So I was pretty close.

The data published on the NREL web site, also readily available, is 1800
kWh/M2/year as an average for the US. 1800/365.25 --> 4.93 kWh/M2/day. (or
"about" 5)

Eyeballing the PV Solar Radiation Annual map for Flat Plate, Facing South,
Latitude Tilt (for CONUS), I would say the NREL value is more accurate than
the apricus subset.


That is not relevant to the question being asked. So if you want to answer
that question, feel free to formulate it and do the analysis.

It's relevant to its practically in NY or New England for example.

Again, the question being asked had to do with energy to produce a solar
panel vs energy produced by the panel. To me it makes sense to average
production over a large area when trying to answer that question.

If you want to take the position that the energy payback will be longer in
an area of limited insolation, vs an area of above average insolation, I
would not argue with that.



As a matter of fact, if you limited PV sales to those areas with above
average insolation, energy payback would be even quicker than what has been
published!

Sensible calculations excluding 'subsidies' which are other peoples' taxes and
including all true costs including cost of capital indicate a system is unlikely to
pay back in your lifetime or ever.

Graham
 
Eeyore said:
Very optimistic if you mean by that 5 kWh /day.
Only 4 of many locations listed make 5 or better in the CONUS.

That looks different in NREL Government pages.
3.5 - 4 would be nearer the mark ( anyone fancy averaging all those
numbers ) and don't forget to consider population distribution vs
location too as to how effective it will be for how many people.

No need to do math, when the US Government provides colored charts.
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/redbook/atlas/
"Flat plate facing south tilted at Latitude" is what I chose, and
I might say that roughly weighted for what I think are population centers,
and annual average of "5" would be about right.

Picking data for the top 10 cities in population,
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/codes_algs/PVWATTS/version1/US/code/pvwattsv1.cgi
New York City 4.56
Los Angeles 5.63
Chicago 4.42
Houston 4.79
Philadelphia 4.57
Phoenix 6.57
San Antonio 5.41
San Diego 5.77
Dallas 5.46
San Jose 5.45
average 5.26
Not to mention different energy profile usage requirements vs time of the
year. NY does OK with an average 3.53 but that falls to 1.4 in December when
it's cold and you want heat.

New York City shows an annual average of 4.56 kWh/m2/day, 2.85 in January,
5.78 in June. Maybe I want Air Conditioning in the summertime more than I
want heat in the winter.
PV solar will always be most effective in the Tropics.

Or cost effective where electricity prices are high.
My PV installation is doing quite well, financially.
 
Here's another cost, the water needed for operations.
http://cals.arizona.edu/azwater/awr/d3aa3f8e-7f00-0101-0097-9f6724822dfe.html
Sensible calculations excluding 'subsidies' which are other peoples'
taxes and including all true costs including cost of capital indicate a
system is unlikely to pay back in your lifetime or ever.

Excluding the end user subsidies would make no sense, because those
subsidies are in place. Those subsidies are part of the full financial
equation.

On the other hand, without those subsidies, your gross exaggerations are
just untrue. They might increase the time for payback in dollar terms, but
not stretch them to "ever", and they have no effect on the watt for watt
payback, which was the question of this thread.
 
M

Mel

Jan 1, 1970
0
T. Keating a écrit :

snip
Note: PV/Wind Energy payback time has been dropping year by year,
meanwhile fossil fuel/nuclear Energy payback times are increasing..
(As depletion occurs fossil fuels/uranium are harder to find,
mine/pump, increased distance to transport, use more energy to
refine, etc.).


snip

I don't see how a fossil fuel / nuclear system can have an energy
payback time;you keep putting energy into to get energy out...

You can produce more energy than that required for the systems
construction & deconstruction, but you can't escape the fact that you
have to keep supplying it and that requires energy (transporting the
fuel, treating the fuel, running the system etc.. not to mention that
the conversion rate of the incoming energy is somewhere between 3 and 60%)

PV, and wind,on the other hand, ask for next to nothing once it's up and
running, so you can have a real energy payback time.


Mel
 
M

Mel

Jan 1, 1970
0
Tomasz Chmielewski a écrit :
From time to time, I read such a statement somewhere in newspapers,
articles etc.:


I hate to cut this down but a lot more energy went into producing
this than it will ever produce itself. I think people are too
easily tricked into thinking they are doing something good for the
environment.


Is it true that a solar panel, generally, takes more power to make than
it will ever produce?


You can also check out : Report IEA-PVPS T10-01-2006

Compared assessment of selected environmental indicators of photovoltaic
electricity in OECD cities

here : http://www.iea-pvps-task10.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=4
 
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