This is not a condemnation of solar power itself - but a lesson in how green capitalism undermines itās own efforts by attempting to create a consumer market for what should remain infrastructural.Ā
The type of photovoltaic panels are being sold to individual homeowners as a responsible purchase to help the environment. However the reality is that these panels are simply cheap enough that a market can be created, which is untrue for other solar systems.Ā
PV panels are inefficient, especially when they are simply bolted to a roof. The more efficient systems of solar power are not things which can be sold to the average homeowner, and thus are not as popular within capitalism. This inefficiency is precisely what will generate the e-waste in question.Ā
Efficient systems of solar power are centralized facilities where mirrors are used to reflect sunlight onto a particular location. The most common version of this still uses PV panels, however they are able to use less panels and get much higher output through auxiliary systems - mirrors, sun-tracking, and so on which remain unavailable to consumers.Ā
The far more promising method of solar power does not use Photovoltaics at all. Concentrated solar thermal has more in common with geo-thermal than it does your typical PV grid. These power plants use a field of mirrors to reflect a huge amount of sunlight into one location, transferring a lot of heat to that one location. The heat is converted into electricity via a steam turbine.
Additionally because Solar-Thermal is a heat based system, power can be retained in the form of heat using systems like molten salt. This reduces the demand for efficient systems of storing electricity itself, one of the greatest challenges to both photovoltaic and wind based power systems.Ā
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