Elon Musk's SolarCity Solar Panels Set Your Home (or Walmart) on fire
and poison the Earth
- Walmart sues Musk for setting their stores on fire!
A neighbor down the street proudly placed solar panels on his house. He
spent $4,000 after government subsidies and whatever deductions he may
have taken from his income tax. He is confident that this move will save
him tons of money on electricity and will safeguard the planet from global
warming Armageddon by reducing his carbon footprint from fossil
fuels.
There is one fly in this perfect ointment—solar panels generate “tons of toxic waste” during the production process
and during their disposal/replacement.
The solar energy advocates, who only see cheap electricity with
rose-colored glasses, are oblivious to the reality of cost, toxic
chemicals, environmental pollution, and health hazards to humans and
animals. Here are some immediate concerns about solar panels.
- How much maintenance would be required for the massive roll out of
solar panels around the planet and who will pay for installation and
maintenance since they do require a lot of maintenance and
replacement?
- Solar farms and solar panels are heavily subsidized by governments.
What if the subsidies stop? And they have. Solyndra went
bankrupt and left taxpayers holding the bag for $535 million in
federal loans. https://www.newsmax.com/FastFeatures/Barack-Obama-Solyndra-Scandal-Green-Energy/2015/01/29/id/621537/
- Producing crystalline silicon from silicon results in a lot of input
loss. “Sawing c-Si into the thin wafers used in panels creates
a significant amount of waste silicon dust, up to 50 percent of which
is lost in the air and water used to rinse the wafers. The process of
making crystalline silicon from silicon is also inefficient; as much
as 80 percent of the raw silicon is lost in the process.
- Health issues in the manufacture, use, and
disposal of solar panels:
- Release of silicon tetrachloride, “a very toxic substance that
reacts violently with water, causes skin burns, skin, eye, and
respiratory irritations.
- Sulfur hexafluoride, a potent greenhouse gas, 23,000 times worse
than CO2, used to clean the reactors used in silicon production.
In the west the “molecules are captured and reused in a
closed-loop process,” but in China there is silicon tetrachloride
pollution from PV cell factories established to fill the demand
for solar energy.
- Cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin films are made of cadmium, which
is a toxic, expensive, cancer-causing heavy metal. Cadmium can be
rinsed into the water table during the production process. One
percent of CdTe is released into the environment as waste.
Thin-film panels that might catch on fire in a home would release
cadmium.
- Copper indium selenide (CIS) uses hydrogen selenide which is
toxic and very dangerous even in low concentrations.
- Selenium dioxide, a dangerous air pollutant, forms at high
temperatures, causing problems for manufacturing workers.
Toxic chemicals in solar panels include cadmium
telluride, copper indium selenide, cadmium gallium (di)selenide, copper
indium gallium (di)selenide, hexafluoroethane, lead, and polyvinyl
fluoride
Dr. David Nguyen, a cancer biologist, remarked,
“The toxic chemicals in solar panels include cadmium telluride, copper
indium selenide, cadmium gallium (di)selenide, copper indium gallium
(di)selenide, hexafluoroethane, lead, and polyvinyl fluoride.
Additionally, silicon tetrachloride, a byproduct of producing
crystalline silicon, is highly toxic.”
Silicon tetrachloride, the byproduct of making wafers for
monocrystalline and polycrystalline panels, is highly toxic and its
improper handling can cause skin burns, pollute the air, cause lung
disease, and, when exposed to water it releases hydrochloric acid (HCl),
a corrosive substance. Manufacturers and recyclers are directly affected
and even homeowners if their homes catch on fire.
To get a picture of the environmental impact of chemicals due to solar
panels manufactured and installed by 2016, a study estimates that “photovoltaics had spread about
11,000 tons of lead and about 800 tons of cadmium” into the
ecosystem.
EPA has classified cadmium as a Group B1, probable
human carcinogen.
There are no salvageable parts on a solar panel so it must be
decomposed, and the chemicals disposed of properly. Disposal costs
are exorbitant and unscrupulous. Chinese manufacturers are releasing the
toxic chemicals into the environment.
Carbon Footprint formed in the production,
maintenance, and replacement of Elon Musk's Solar Panels
Solar power may not produce greenhouse gases while consumers use it, but
it does release harmful chemicals during production. One such
chemical is nitrogen trifluoride, which, according to Ray Weiss, a
professor of geochemistry at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, is
17,000 stronger than carbon dioxide.
According to Deutsche Welle, Sulphur hexafluoride, a greenhouse
gas released during solar panel production, is 22,800 times more potent
than CO2.
Since 1997, when the U.S. produced 334.2 megawatts of solar energy, the
industry has grown to 6,220.3 megawatts in 2013. For the 0.2 percent solar
power usage in the U.S. (Institute for Energy Research), an insignificant
amount, the solar panel production and disposal industries seem to create
a lot of dangerous pollutants.
Ben Howell pointed out other issues that solar panel proponents have not
entertained, the carbon footprint formed in the production, maintenance,
and replacement of the following:
- Batteries that store the generated electricity during the day so that
the homeowner has electricity at night. If there are no batteries, then
the power generated during sun light goes back into the grid and the
owner must use utility power.
- What is the carbon footprint and pollution from lithium mining?
- What about the control switching and circuitry required by law that
disconnects the home from the grid during a storm in order to avoid
electrocution of utility workers from the live wires coming from the
home, intermingling with the offline grid during repairs?
- What about the backup fail-safe safety system if the primary system
fails?
- Smart meters have the lifespan of a cell phone, are very expensive to
install and do not last if the traditional old electro-mechanical meters
that are known to last basically forever. Ben Howell said that “the
old-school electro-mechanical electric meter on my parents’ house was
installed in 1948 and is still working accurately so far for 71 years.”
- What is the cumulative cost of insurance to replace the solar panels
after a hailstorm shatters the glass?
- What is the cost to periodically clean the dust, pollen, tree sap,
bird droppings, leaves, and other debris that block the sunlight from
the solar panels?
- What is the cost of a new roof or installing new shingles nailed in
when the additional cost of disconnecting, off-loading, staging,
up-loading, and re-installing solar panels are factored in
- Will solar panel degradation, breakage, contamination, storms, normal
clouds formations, and other anomalies, causing fluctuations in the
voltage and current output cause the lithium batteries to go kaput more
quickly? And will such cases void the warranty on the homeowner’s
appliances?