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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (22089)	7/25/2010 4:28:43 PM
From: Eric	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

Good job! I'm impressed that you dug a little deeper and learned about their remediation process. These things are supposed to last 30 years or so ... who knows really. Yup, First Solar's early R & D test panels have only been exposed to the elements for about fifteen years now. Silicon based ones have been around for over 40 years. I have a 20 watt silicon based panel made in 1972 that I took down from a repeater installation up in the Cascades on a mountain and am using it here to keep some lead acid car batteries charged in my garage. It still puts out over 85% of it's rated nameplate capacity. Not one lic of maintence required or one molecule of fossil fuel pollution emitted from it in all of those years! Consider if homeowner E installs these things on his home. E dies and his widow or heirs sell the house to X. After 5-10 years X sells it to Y. What's the odds that Y is going to know about First Solar's dismantling and packaging instructions or care? Will Y even check to see if First Solar still is in business and has a recycling request site on the web? Last time I checked an owner was responsible for anything on his property. Folks here are spending thousands of $$ digging up their old, leaking home furnace diesel fuel tanks here in Washington. Not good for ground water.. If every house has solar panels in 20 years, won't the 5 - 10% that isn't recycled going to be a pretty big amount of unreclaimed material? Actually virtually all of the PV panels today are valuable for recycling. The aluminum frame alone is worth quite a bit. In the end we won't know how reliable FSLR's panels should be. I'm guessing well over 40 + years. Most PV's today made by the top tier manufacturers have warranties extending to 25 years. Is your car warranted 25 years, any ICE engine, in fact anything that burns fossil fuels? Eric