Self-healing solar panels may be the future of reliable clean energy

[Sherman A1]

A material commonly used in solar panels has been found to repair itself when damaged - and scientists think this ability could be vital for the future of clean energy.

The substance, called antimony selenide, is what’s known as a solar absorber material. This means it can be used to harness solar energy and convert this power into electricity.

The team at the University of York, UK who made the discovery are now looking at how this technology could be used to create longer-lasting solar panels, which could potentially 'self-heal' when damaged.

One of the biggest hindrances to progress in this type of technology is the reliability and longevity of cells. Currently, solar panels have an average lifespan of between 25-30 years, so developing technology which can repair itself could be a crucial breakthrough.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/04/17/self-repairing-solar-panels-may-be-the-future-of-reliable-clean-energy

[NNadir]

1. Reliability is probably the worst word possible to discuss solar energy.

It doesn't matter in any case. After more than 50 years of breathless announcements of 'breakthroughs" and millions upon millions of hours of computer time spent discussing it, and trillions of dollars spent on solar infrastructure, hundreds of thousands of copper mines devoted to make wires to connect it, solar technology does not produce 5 of the roughly 600 exajoules of energy humanity consumes each year.

It's widely reported that the sun disappears in the sky during a significant part of ever 24 hour period in every area of this planet. This alone should suggest that "reliable" is nonsense. It might prove less unreliable if climate change, which all the solar talk has failed to arrest after decades of prattling, eliminates stuff like snow - as it might - but it is still unreliable.

[zipplewrath]

2. Years ago I felt the same

Back when cells were about 3 - 5% efficient. When they started to go north of 20%, I could see that there was a real future for them. I do think they're being utilized incorrectly. These roof top home systems should be paired with a "power wall" to provide power after sundown. One of the problems with highly centralized power generation is that upwards of 40% of the power is lost in transmission. Roof top systems with a power wall or other local storage system can eliminate much of this loss. Local laws should probably be changed so that businesses can generate some or all of their own power on site, as long as it is some sort of "renewable".

[NNadir]

4. Numbers don't lie.

Speaking of "years ago," I've been hearing similar statements to everything you've written for my whole adult life, and I'm not young.

Numbers don't lie, however, and are a useful corrective to wishful thinking.

Here from the 2021 IEA World Energy Outlook - after decade after decade after decade of the promotion of the thermodynamic and environmental nightmare of every storage - is how our energy profile breaks out with the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide having reached 420 ppm in our atmosphere, less than 10 years after first reaching 400 ppm:



Source: 2021 IEA WEO, Table A1A, page 294.

We spent over a trillion dollars on this crap for no result. Here's what I often reproduce:

Recently I updated the expenditure on so called "renewable energy" as we happily run along trashing huge stretches of wilderness, rendering them into industrial parks to serve the clearly failed rhetoric of anti-nukes.

Source: UNEP/Bloomberg: Global Trends in Renewable Energy.

I manually entered the figures in the bar graph in figure 8 to see how much money we've thrown at this destructive affectation since 2004 (up to 2019): It works out to 3.2633 trillion dollars, more than President Biden has wisely recommended for the improvement of all infrastructure in the entire United States.

I'm sorry, but we are not going to mine our way, digging Congolese cobalt, Russian Nickel, and Chilean lithium, into making this battery stuff "green" and "sustainable." It's dirty and it's unsustainable.

It's already failed, and done so on a grand and disastrous scale.

Here's where we are as of this morning:

April 16: 421.45 ppm
April 15: 420.57 ppm
April 14: 420.43 ppm
April 13: 420.71 ppm
April 12: 418.99 ppm
Last Updated: April 17, 2022

Recent Daily Average Mauna Loa CO2

These numbers suggest to me, if no one else, that it may be time to go nuclear against climate change. The solar industry will never be as reliable or as clean or as sustainable as nuclear energy.

[Finishline42]

6. Not too long ago we had a day in the US where

renewable energy (wind, solar and hydro) produced more electricity that nuclear and coal.

Because of all the wind and solar capacity being added annually (we are just starting to add off-shore wind) it won't be too long that a day will turn into a week and then turn into a month.

I expect all during those years we will be constantly informed that France is mainly using nuclear energy to power their grid. Well, we aren't France, which has a history of the federal gov't running things like nuclear power plants and high speed rail. While we have one of the two main political parties that is adamantly against that happening in our country, which is why we only have about 100 nuclear power plants producing 20% of the electricity for our grid. We aren't building another 100 or 200 nuclear reactors to take us to 40% or 60%.

[NNadir]

9. We had entire decades where solar and wind energy did nothing at all to address climate change.

We're at 421 ppm concentrations of CO2 reported as of this morning.

Maybe the wishful thinking set missed this. 421.45 ppm, April 16, 2022.

I don't know how many times I have to repeat it and link it, 421.45 ppm:

April 16: 421.45 ppm
April 15: 420.57 ppm
April 14: 420.43 ppm
April 13: 420.71 ppm
April 12: 418.99 ppm
Last Updated: April 17, 2022

Recent Daily Average Mauna Loa CO2

I know that "I'm not an anti-nuke" anti-nukes will never stop making soothsaying predictions about their worthless junk that needs to be replaced every 20 to 30 years (under ideal conditions, sooner under real conditions) but decade after decade after decade of similar predictions going back to the asshole Amory Lovins in 1976's unreferenced stupid paper have failed to pan out.

He was declared a genius for handing out that snake oil, and now we have lots of similar "geniuses" here, very stable geniuses, repeating the chant.

In October of 1976 the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere was 328.46 ppm (the week beginning October 3, 1976.)

Do I have to explain what the difference between 421.45 ppm and 328.46 ppm is? Maybe I do. It's 92.99 ppm. It happened in my lifetime. It's 45 years, 5 months and 12 days since October 3, 1976. That's how long I've personally been listening to this shit. Again, it's 92.99 ppm higher, more than 45 years after Lovins predicted a solar nirvana.

Where the fuck is it? It's damned near half a century. Where the F-U-C-K is it?

I realize that some people praise government stupidity; hell the Republican party has made public stupidity into a religion, but personally I don't surrender to stupidity, not stupidity from Republicans, not stupidity from Democrats, not stupidity from political independents. Not from Christians, not from Taoists, not from Buddhists, not from Jews, not from atheists, not from Muslims, not from Hindus, not from anyone.

I believe stupidity, public or otherwise, can, should and hopefully will be overcome by clear thinking, if not by people who whine that the US isn't France, at least by people who matter.

In my opinion anyone whining that the US isn't France, or isn't China, or isn't fucking Estonia doesn't matter.

Do I make myself clear?

I work hard to learn what's possible, not probable maybe, not likely, and I don't care about people who whine that what I've worked hard to discover is possible is not possible, this in an atmosphere of hand waving, wishful thinking, ignorance and fear.

Perhaps the anti-nukes will win; perhaps we'll be over 440 ppm before 2030, with them still whining about how much fucking land and sea they're going to trash with industrial parks for wind turbines. I will still fight it, at least until I'm dead, which will be soon enough.

I have had, at least, the decency to be ashamed of what my generation has done to the world.

France learned about nuclear power from us. We can learn from them. There is no reason we can't build 500 reactors in this country other than the conservative notion that we should keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over ad nauseum while the planetary atmosphere collapses in a vale, not a vale really but a pit, of whiny stupidity.

If I just wanted to throw up my hands and embrace ignorance and wishful thinking, I wouldn't be here confronting this bullshit.

I'd just give up and let assholes destroy the planet, wouldn't I?

And because I'm the old type of environmentalist, not some bourgeois type day dreaming about Elon Musk's electric car and praising the mining industry to dig the shit out of the planet to mine metals for unsustainable batteries, but rather the kind who cares about the preservation of wilderness as opposed to its industrialization, I oppose in no uncertain terms, the destructive and useless wind industry and its even more useless cousin, the solar industry.

Trillions of dollars squandered, for what? For a little over ten Exajoules after half a century of chanting, this on a planet consuming damned near 600 Exajoules every damned year, with the lives of millions of people vanishing each year from fossil fuel waste?

If this shit keeps up, we will see 440 ppm by 2030. Period. About 60 million people will die from air pollution in the next eight years. Storms, droughts, fires and disappearing glaciers will rip humanity and the planet on which we live apart.

I don't care who doesn't give a rat's ass about these facts. I do.

[Caribbeans]

7. Powerwall

SolarReviews.com: As of March 2022, the total cost of installing one Tesla Powerwall+ battery system is $11,000.

Despite Tesla claiming that the Tesla Powerwall cost would drop by half in the next three years, we’ve seen the price of the Powerwall increase three times, eventually reaching its current price.

Not only that, Tesla no longer sells their Powerwalls individually, so the total amount you'll have to pay will be for the price of a Powerwall and the price of a new solar panel system if you want your Powerwall directly from Tesla. You can still purchase the Powerwall on its own from local companies, but the downside to this is that getting the Powerwall from someone other than Tesla means you aren’t guaranteed to get that $11,000 price.

Tesla may also require you to upgrade your electrical panel before you install a Powerwall, which can add another $2,500 to your installation (a cost that Tesla doesn’t mention at all in their initial online price estimates). More https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/is-the-tesla-powerwall-the-best-solar-battery-available

$11,000+ to store 13.5 kWh of energy, which will last an average home around 12 hours.

13.5 kWh of electricity costs around $1.48 at .11 cents per kWh

$11,000 to store ~$1.50 of power which will last half a day.

If heavily used (the only way it makes sense) the battery will last maybe 12-15 years, and then must be replaced. And hope it doesn't need service - because it may be weeks or months before Tesla gets around to service it.

Today's Powerwall is a total ripoff - a toy for rich people to talk about with their rich friends.

[Finishline42]

10. Tesla isn't the only company in that market

Generac is also a player as is LG.

With my utility, a battery keeps your system functional if the grid goes out (Texas 2021 winter storm). Currently when a storm causes a flicker or longer interruption, my house loses power even if the panels are producing.

Generac is advertising using a smaller battery just in that case.

You missing another cost factor - utilities attacking net metering in various ways. Instead of an even exchange, they are wanting solar customers to sell excess electricity wholesale to the grid and buy it back at retail, so any excess power stored in a battery saves money.

In a couple of years Tesla's battery pack in their cars will last a million miles so after you wear the car out at 500k miles, park it and plug it in.

The first big flat screen TV's were also an item to brag about by the rich. Now everybody has the money to buy a 60" 4K LED TV. I expect battery storage will see similar innovation and economies of scale.

[zipplewrath]

11. I'd go with Genrac

They have a better reputation and offer better terms. They are also a better established business. And you are right, the efforts to reduce the payment for excess energy from the utility suggests that one would be better off ensuring that all the energy being consumed comes from ones own panels first. Selling back excess energy is fine, but if one can generally get by on what they produce, without selling it back, all the better.

[mitch96]

3. I'm curious what the efficiency is? Commercial solar panels are about 15 to 18% efficient now.nt

[Finishline42]

5. Other than a measure of advancement how is efficiency relevant?

In an ICE vehicle - efficiency is very relevant because you have to pay for gas.

You don't pay for the fuel that solar panels turns into electricity.

I would think the more important numbers are how many years and at what percentage the warranty is. My panels bought a couple of years ago are guaranteed for 80% output after 25 years. Which means they will have paid for themselves before the warranty runs out and I'll still have decades of production to go.

[mitch96]

8. I would think if you have a 15% efficient panel of a given sqft, a lower efficient panel would need

a greater sqft to get the same output.
I'm just pulling numbers out of the air here but if a panel is 15% efficient and produces 1 watt of energy, and the new panel is only 7% efficient you would need a panel twice as large
to get that same 1 watt of energy output. If you have a fixed sqft roof the more efficient panel would give you more output per sqft. That's how I see it. efficiency per sqft.
I see your point on longevity. You don't want a super efficient panel that runs out after 10 years or is susceptible to hail damage and needs to be replaced often.
A balance for sure...
m

[zipplewrath]

12. You are not wrong

The cost of panels aren't cheap. The more efficient they are, the fewer will be needed and the cost will be lower. And yes, they won't be as efficient on year 5 as they were on day one. It is important. Efficiency can be measured in multiple ways, but when you look at a wide variety of power sources, and all of the associated losses involved, 20% - 40% is typical. ICE can be rated anywhere from 18% to 60% depending upon the definition. A 20% efficient solar cell starts to become "competitive" with other forms.