Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

[Chalo]

And yet Tesla is delivering results, whether according to schedule or not, while the detractors are delivering... complaints.

While it's not clear where the real substance is, it's clearly not with folks who'd gladly exterminate us by means of failed status quo.

 

[TheBeastie]

Good new articles on energy.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/08/we-dont-need-solar-and-wind-to-save-the-climate-and-its-a-good-thing-too/#59adedc9e4de

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/op-ed-why-private-investors-must-fund-new-nuclear-power-right-now
TerraPower, whose lead investor is Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and ThorCon Power, whose lead investor is Acadian Asset Management founder Gary Bergstrom, have publically committed to goals on cost (< $0.07/kwh), availability (full-scale demonstration by 2025) and deployment rates (ramping installations toward the 100 GWe/year of new capacity that the world is anticipated to need by 2030, according to the EIA) that are ambitious enough to actually make a difference to the world’s carbon emissions. To appreciate the pace required to beat fossil fuels in Asia, you should look at the updates recently announced by ThorCon Power in Indonesia.
http://thorconpower.com/news

South Australia hit $14,000MWh on some charts today, again. The reason why specifically doesn't matter, we know its no coincidence that the most expensive electricity in the world comes from states with the largest wind-turbine installation in the world.

One thing I been thinking is how those LCE charts cheat for wind, as they only include the wind cost price based on when the wind is blowing and don't include the costs they inflict on the user for its extreme intermittency.. Nuclear, on the other hand, has all its baggage added into the price including the hefty insurance costs, like a worst case scenario radiation meltdown/fallout to nearby cities.
Wind can just pop in and out for 1 hour of wind-generation and disappear without notification leaving a $14000MWh spot price which is generally blamed on everything else like the fossil fuels backup generation instead of the wind.
That really doesn't seem fair.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#United_States
To me the real test of "levelized cost of electricity" (LCOE) can be drawn together by looking at states that have tried to implement the same energy source technology and what the end price the consumer pays.
This screams the fact that wind is incredibly expensive if you include its intermittency/unreliability support costs.
No one in the world denies South Australia has the most expensive electricity in the world. And I think its just madness to claim its a coincidence that also utilizes wind more than any country in the world and not blame wind energy. If only SA actually had an impressive co2 grams per KWh but its horrible at around 450g per KWh average vs Frances 30grams on average.


South Australian energy spot price charts were yesterday as high as $14,000 MWh depending on the source, obviously, something went wrong for 1 hour, this has been a weekly occurrence lately. Electricitymap weirdly enough seems to be the most honest in this area.
This happened last week or the week before where SA used their diesel generators, but despite the emergency never elected to discharge above 30MW on the Hornsdale-power-reserve-Tesla battery which can discharge up to 100MW for emergencies (but never has).

One thing I find annoying about the Hornsdale power-reserve (SA Tesla battery) is that it is also tweaked to never show the full price of electricity in spot $MWh. Even though it was super high today and you can even visually see the line blast above the max level on the chart, the numbers its willing to display never go anywhere near multi-$1000 MWh price, as the official spot price even though they do on more official sources. Instead, its highest price for the whole day is $349.95 per MWh as far as the Hornsdale-Tesla battery website is concerned.
This also happened the other week 26th of April, when SA elected to use around 200MW of diesel generated electricity for a few hours rather than touch its Tesla battery for anything more than 30MW.
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/download/file.php?id=233086
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Db2dbNVVwAAewa1.jpg

So its another example of stuff being tweaked to make it look less bad or better than it really is.





All up this is not even news, so far its been a "good to normal week" for South Australia in electricity, but in countries that don't rely on wind it would be considered hell and totally unacceptable.
This is why I think a better LCOE model needs to be created because wind not including its general wider effects on electricity as a whole like what you get in a final retail bill is not realistic.
The "its not wind-generators fault because the wind stopped suddenly, so no wind at the time thus technically its everyone else's fault like fossil fuel generators" is madness, but this is quite literally the world we live in.

If you took a taxi to the airport for a non-refundable flight to Hawaii and the taxi suddenly stopped halfway for whatever reason (like no wind-energy), and you had to walk the rest of the way to the airport, you wouldn't consider it good value for money. But if you didn't tell the whole story to someone and they saw your taxi receipt cost to the airport was half the normal price they would be saying well done on saving some money..

Or alternatively, instead of walking the rest of the way to the airport, you had a system were other taxi drivers who were powered by fossil fuels, were not allowed to drive you to the airport unless the wind-powered-car stopped, they would then show up to drive you the rest of the way. You would probably find they would ask for a lot of money to do this, why? Because they would be forced to sit in their cars all day waiting for that opportunity for the wind powered-car to stop working, this would require a painful completely unprofitable long and frustrating wait between chances to make any money, like a lot of Taxi/Uber drivers who lease their car, they would be sitting there while paying for a cars lease/bank-loan-interest-repayments/upkeep and not actually allowed to drive anyone unless the wind-powered-car suddenly failed, the only way to make it viable is to increase the price.

This seems to be one of the major factors to increased costs, where you at minimum need to double or even x5 the infrastructure to provide the same service, I think really it's around x5 the infrastructure to get remotely the same amount of energy generation. You have a wind-farm thats capacity factor is 20%, so you build 5 wind-farms, then you need 5 more transmission towers to carry the power. And as this article states, transmission lines are expensive to build and maintain and add up quickly, folks used to hate power-lines but now turn a blind eye to new ones because they think its helping the environment.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/04/25/yes-solar-and-wind-really-do-increase-electricity-prices-and-for-inherently-physical-reasons/#311f323917e8

You can build x5 to deal with low capacity factor in wind but the other thing to note is you often just don't get the power from wind even if it's massively spread out over a long distance. Australia for example at times when there is little wind across the WHOLE of Australia at the same time only generate a net 50MW of power for around 5000MW of installed wind-capacity (so 1%)
Quote from article "all the wind farms currently across the mainland NEM are contributing, in aggregate, less than 50MW."
http://www.wattclarity.com.au/2018/05/a-timely-reminder-of-the-need-for-much-more-diversity-in-wind-harvest-patterns/

*Add/Edit*
I was thinking it was a particularly cold northern hemisphere winter this year so I figured the photosynthesis activity must have been particularly low. Looking at NOAA website for GHG measurements/charts suggests this was the case.
During the peak of the winter at this particular measurement site, they hit a nice healthy co2 470ppm for carbon dioxide.



Australia had their federal budget announced last night for 2018 including tax cuts etc but some were crying there's nothing mentioned of money to fight Climate Change
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-08/federal-budget-2018-winners-losers/9738982

But why would there be, unless they put a nuclear reactor in the budget nothing would help anyway, until mainstream media does a better job telling folks what actually lowers co2 there's no point.
South Australia was emitting around x19times more co2 than France all budget day.

Report says, European Union carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels increased in 2017
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-carbon-climatechange/eu-carbon-emissions-rose-in-2017-eurostat-idUSKBN1I50YU

 

[Hillhater]

Sorry guys, i got distracted by life !

We know with very great accuracy how much petroleum, coal, and natural gas is produced and burned every year. ....

" very great accuracy" ?.... you do know that the best data we have even for that highly monitored issue is accepted as only being within 10% of the true figure. ?

.

....... The fact that the increased CO2 is due to fossil fuel burning can also be confirmed with high accuracy by isotopic analyses. ...........

Im well aware of the isotopic analyses data, and again, im sure you are also aware of the debate and alternative analyses deduced from those measurements and resulting conclusions as to the potential source of increasing CO2 levels
I also understand that its human nature to accept and support those results which best fit your pre established beliefs and im happy for you to go with your commitments...
.....but please do not expect me to swallow unproven, disputed, theories as established science. Some of us wish to keep an open mind. !
All of which

 

[jimw1960]

I also understand that its human nature to accept and support those results which best fit your pre established beliefs and im happy for you to go with your commitments...
.....but please do not expect me to swallow unproven, disputed, theories as established science. Some of us wish to keep an open mind. !
All of which

Sorry, friend, but this has nothing to do with my beliefs. It has to do with data. I am a scientist, not an ideologue. I would love nothing more than to find out I have been wrong about all of this, because the implications of a changing climate are serious. You keep claiming things are just theories open to debate, but you show no data that can explain the increase in isotopically dead CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans, that just so happens to add up to the same amount of CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. What analyses you do attempt to pass off are long-debunked denier myths that come straight from right-wing blogs and news sites, or "studies" funded by Heartland Institute. Hell, even the same three scientists that the deniers keep trotting out (Christie, Curry, and Spencer) have all admitted that the increased CO2 is due to human burning of fossil fuels. So, I ask you again: show me your model.

 

[billvon]

So, I ask you again: show me your model. Hell, even the same three scientists that the deniers keep trotting out (Christie, Curry, and Spencer) have all admitted that the increased CO2 is due to human burning of fossil fuels.

Yep. Even the most vocal deniers have largely given up the "we're not increasing CO2!" brand of denial, and have moved on to other angles (i.e. all climate change is good, or it's too late to change anything, or no one knows whether more CO2 will warm the climate.)

 

[Hillhater]

I am not aware of anyone seriously disputing the level of airborne CO2 , ( other than some of the historical records) , but the cause and source of the increase is still very much in debate, as are its possible consequences.

 

[TheBeastie]

To me its crazy that a combustible fuel source doesn't exist that practically only emits co2 and nothing else so there is no smog or technically anything to complain about other than what people create when they exhale everytime. https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*GvZptuCpo6ul_sng7CbPQg.png
Even though its obviously incredibly difficult to teach the public that their potential new car fuel exhaust output would be no different than people breathing, it would be helpful.

Well Bosch claims they have done it with their new diesel system, claiming its 1/10th of legal limits for NOx gases. I guess something good has come from the crackdown on diesel now.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/04/bosch-reduces-diesel-exhaust-smog-to-1-10th-the-legal-limits.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-25/bosch-says-it-s-made-a-breakthrough-that-can-save-diesel-engines

Came across this newly released scientific paper that claims biomass via wood burning to generate electricity adds to the carbon atmosphere, its not neutral like the general claim is to be believed.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa512/pdf

Its chocoblock full of lines like this

[A]lthough wood has approximately the same carbon intensity as coal (0.027 vs. 0.025 tC GJ−1 of primary energy […]), combustion efficiency of wood and wood pellets is lower (Netherlands Enterprise Agency; IEA 2016). Estimates also suggest higher processing losses in the wood supply chain (Roder et al 2015). Consequently, wood-fired power plants generate more CO2 per kWh than coal. Burning wood instead of coal therefore creates a carbon debt—an immediate increase in atmospheric CO2 compared to fossil energy—that can be repaid over time only as—and if— NPP [net primary production] rises above the flux of carbon from biomass and soils to the atmosphere on the harvested lands.”

“Growth in wood supply causes steady growth in atmospheric CO2 because more CO2 is added to the atmosphere every year in initial carbon debt than is paid back by regrowth, worsening global warming and climate change. The qualitative result that growth in bioenergy raises atmospheric CO2 does not depend on the parameters: as long as bioenergy generates an initial carbon debt, increasing harvests mean more is ‘borrowed’ every year than is paid back. More precisely, atmospheric CO2 rises as long as NPP [net primary production] remains below the initial carbon debt incurred each year plus the fluxes of carbon from biomass and soils to the atmosphere.”

“[P]rojected growth in wood harvest for bioenergy would increase atmospheric CO2 for at least a century because new carbon debt continuously exceeds NPP.”

“[C]ontrary to the policies of the EU and other nations, biomass used to displace fossil fuels injects CO2 into the atmosphere at the point of combustion and during harvest, processing and transport. Reductions in atmospheric CO2 come only later, and only if the harvested land is allowed to regrow.”

 

[jimw1960]

....but the cause and source of the increase is still very much in debate, as are its possible consequences.

No, it isn't under debate. Period. End of story.

 

[billvon]

I am not aware of anyone seriously disputing the level of airborne CO2 , ( other than some of the historical records) , but the cause and source of the increase is still very much in debate, as are its possible consequences.

No, they're not. That's like an anti-vaxxer saying "no one denies that vaccines can prevent disease, but no one knows if they actually _cause_ diseases including autism."

To me its crazy that a combustible fuel source doesn't exist that practically only emits co2 and nothing else so there is no smog or technically anything to complain about other than what people create when they exhale everytime.

I have a feeling you would not want to be in a room with even 10% of "only what people create what they exhale everytime."

 

[Hillhater]

....but the cause and source of the increase is still very much in debate, as are its possible consequences.

No, it isn't under debate. Period. End of story.

You are speaking for yourself,..not everybody !

 

[sendler2112]

I watched "Cool It".
.
https://youtu.be/ChKevI7nwIM
.
I might be interested to skim through Bjorn Lomorg's book.
.
https://www.amazon.com/Skeptical-Environmentalist-Measuring-State-World/dp/0521010683/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526156082&sr=1-1&keywords=skeptical+environmentalist
.
Because the movie somewhat contradicted itself. The first half devloped his concept (that I agree with in part even though his understanding as presented is very much incomplete) that we have much bigger problems to worry about than Global Warming. The first half of the movie makes the point that trying to reduce carbon emissions will cost a fortune and change very little in the end when it is finally seen what is really possible. He also correctly identifies that spending money on socio-economic changes, health care, housing, education, all pay forward toward a better world more than upending existing infrastructure.
.
But then in the second half of the movie, shows solar and wind and other typical sci-fi solutions like wave power and Hydrogen electrolysis in a hopeful light. When he just spent the first half stating that they are too expensive for what you get.

 

[Hillhater]

Looks like NASA researchers believe that the rate of increase in airborne CO2 levels are The result of surface temperature rise......

.......In 2015, we earthlings – some 7.5 billion of us – discharged 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air from many tailpipes and smokestacks. That is about the same amount of planet-warming gas belched out in 2014, and the figure remained largely unchanged in 2016.

After a century of exponential growth in the mass of carbon dioxide ejected into the air, the leveling-off of the output caught many observers by surprise. It’s explained partly by widespread substitution of natural gas for coal in electricity production and by expanded use of wind and solar energy.
Although the amount of CO2 ejected into the air leveled off in 2015, the quantity accumulating in the atmosphere did not let up. Rather, it spiked. Indeed, the concentration of the gas increased that year by 3 parts per million (ppm), 50 percent more than in the previous year and the average annual increase of the prior four decades. Researchers hadn’t observed an increase so large since they began systematic measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere back in 1958. The amount of CO2 in the air probably hadn’t surged so much in a single year since at least the end of the last ice age – 10,000 years ago.
A scientific article published in late 2017 explains this apparent paradox. The extra CO2 came from the world’s tropical forests. Beginning at the end of 2014 and lasting 19 months, the strongest El Niño recorded in more than 50 years warmed and dried the tropics – increasing wildfires, slowing tree growth and speeding-up the rotting of dead vegetation – releasing billions of extra tons of CO2 into the air. The authors of that 2017 paper also reported a surprise: Not all tropical forests reacted to the El Niño the same way, a finding the coauthors say could help improve climate models.

Concerns that forests in warmer decades ahead may 'absorb less' carbon, releasing more into the atmosphere.
The forests most likely rebounded in 2017, and the trend of CO2 growth appears to have returned to its long-term average. But the incident may preview a worrisome mechanism that climate change might permanently trigger, says Junjie Liu, the paper’s lead author and a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Ca. Many climate models project that hot, dry conditions in the tropics, such as those of 2015 and early 2016, will be more common later this century. She says that the results reported in her paper hint that in the future, the tropics “may release more carbon into the atmosphere or absorb less,” speeding the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and further accelerating warming........

https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/05/cracking-a-climate-conundrum/

 

[Punx0r]

Looks like NASA researchers believe that the rate of increase in airborne CO2 levels are The result of surface temperature rise......

No, they don't. Stop making shit up.

 

[Hillhater]

^^^ still having problems with reading comprehension ??
Or simply refusing to accept any facts that do not fit with your preconcieved views ?

 

[jimw1960]

^^^ still having problems with reading comprehension ??
Or simply refusing to accept any facts that do not fit with your preconcieved views ?

Don't be daft. That article you linked is about why the rise in CO2 levels in the air seemed to accelerate, despite the rate of human emissions being relatively constant since 2014. The research suggests that "Beginning at the end of 2014 and lasting 19 months, the strongest El Niño recorded in more than 50 years warmed and dried the tropics – increasing wildfires, slowing tree growth and speeding-up the rotting of dead vegetation – releasing billions of EXTRA tons of CO2 into the air."

In other words, this is basically a feedback from the warming we are causing to cause tropical forests to release even more CO2 on top of the 30+ billion tons that we are adding every year. Notice the word "EXTRA." Still want to talk about reading comprehension?

 

[gogo]

https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/05/cracking-a-climate-conundrum/
“Previous studies suggested a single dominant process determined the year-to-year variability in Earth carbon cycle,” says Liu. “That’s not supported.”

Gosh, a central premise of the Henny-Penny consortium is found to be "not supported".
*See Steven Wright's quote below:

 

[billvon]

^^^ still having problems with reading comprehension ??
Or simply refusing to accept any facts that do not fit with your preconcieved views ?

"the trend of CO2 growth appears to have returned to its long-term average. "

So now it's back to increasing as we emit CO2, after a pulse of CO2 from a lot of forest fires increased it - one of those second order effects climate change deniers prefer to ignore (unless it fits their agenda of the day of course.)

In other words, exactly what the science says is happening. In the future look for other second order effects, like increasing methane concentrations due to permafrost melting.

 

[Hillhater]

......
, this is basically a feedback from the warming we are causing to cause tropical forests to release even more CO2 on top of the 30+ billion tons that we are adding every year. Notice the word "EXTRA." ....

So you do acknowledge that an EXTRA increase in surface temperature CAUSES a corresponding EXTRA increase in CO2 emissions ?
And if "EXTRA" temperature increase, results in EXTRA CO2, ....is it not possible that the recorded recent "baseline" increase in surface temperatures might just be a cause of the corresponding recent increase in CO2 levels ?
...or would you explain why if that definitely NOT the case for some reason ?
30+ bn tonnes sound impressive...until you consider what +_10% variation in the natural emissions ..and corresponding reduction in sink rates...are in comparason
Natural variations such overwhelm FFuel emissions by orders of magnitude.... as is shown in that paper.

"the trend of CO2 growth appears to have returned to its long-term average. "

...Yes, but it would appear that temperatures are not following the expected trend ....if CO2 levels were "forcing" as predicted...?

....So now it's back to increasing as we emit CO2, after a pulse of CO2 from a lot of forest fires increased it - one of those second order effects climate change deniers prefer to ignore (unless it fits their agenda of the day of course.)

Unless these recorded variations in the natural flux of CO2. are one of those FIRST order effects climate change "alarmists" prefer to ignore (unless it fits their agenda of the day of course.)

 

[billvon]

So you do acknowledge that an EXTRA increase in surface temperature CAUSES a corresponding EXTRA increase in CO2 emissions ?

Sometimes - at least until all the forests burn. Then you won't see much additional CO2. (But you will see a lot of methane from melting permafrost - again, until all that is gone.)

And if "EXTRA" temperature increase, results in EXTRA CO2, ....is it not possible that the recorded recent "baseline" increase in surface temperatures might just be a cause of the corresponding recent increase in CO2 levels ?

Nope. We know how much CO2 we are emitting. It is not magically being transported to another planet.

...Yes, but it would appear that temperatures are not following the expected trend ....if CO2 levels were "forcing" as predicted...?

They are following the expected trend quite accurately, as demonstrated by half a dozen graphs and tables posted here. I won't repost them all again; feel free to review the thread if you are curious.

Unless these recorded variations in the natural flux of CO2.

Nope. They correspond quite accurately to the well-known anthropogenic flux of CO2. So unless you posit that aliens are coming here, stealing all the CO2 coming from our smokestacks and tailpipes, transporting it somewhere else without us noticing, while simultaneously a previously-unknown natural source is putting exactly as much CO2 into the atmosphere - then no, they aren't "natural fluxes." Even if your Exxon stock would prefer they were.

BTW here's a fun graph. It shows IPCC predictions for temperature change vs predictions of some prominent deniers over about 22 years. (Of course, since then warming has increased in speed.) Which group do you think has a better handle on the issues?

 

[Hillhater]

That is some pretty creative (deceptive?) trend lines overlaid on there. !
you would have to be "blind Harry" not to accept that the observed results show a leveling off in the slope of the temperature graph after 2000...as clearly demonstrated through to current date on multiple data sets available from reputable sources.

So you do acknowledge that an EXTRA increase in surface temperature CAUSES a corresponding EXTRA increase in CO2 emissions ?

Sometimes - at least until all the forests burn. Then you won't see much additional CO2. (But you will see a lot of methane from melting permafrost - again, until all that is gone.)

"Sometimes"..? ...i guess you mean when it suits your model. ?
Wasnt it you who pointed out previously how insignificant forrest fires, volcanoes, cow farts, etc ,are in the total carbon cycle ?
But also dont forget the accellerated decay of vegitation, CO2 release from oceans etc ...all much greater than the fossil fuel contribution.

And if "EXTRA" temperature increase, results in EXTRA CO2, ....is it not possible that the recorded recent "baseline" increase in surface temperatures might just be a cause of the corresponding recent increase in CO2 levels ?

Nope. We know how much CO2 we are emitting. It is not magically being transported to another planet.

?? Lost me there in afraid. ..but...
1) we dont actuall know with any accuracy how much CO2 "we" are emitting, at least not within +_10% as shown by the different figures reported bt different sources. And we know even less how much the natural emmissions and sink rates amount to !......all we "know" is what we can measure in airbourn CO2 levels
2) No, its not going to another planet, most people recognise that it is simply being redistributed between locations, land, vegitation, oceans, atmosphere......surely you understand that !..

.

. Unless these recorded variations in the natural flux of CO2.

Nope. They correspond quite accurately to the well-known anthropogenic flux of CO2.

..now you are contradicting yourself and the fundamental conclusion of that NASA paper..
Which was that the variations in CO2 were due to increased NATURAL emissions resulting from increased temperatures...

...BTW here's a fun graph. It shows IPCC predictions for temperature change vs predictions of some prominent deniers over about 22 years. (Of course, since then warming has increased in speed.) Which group do you think has a better handle on the issues?

.. As i said above, you have to be blind to not see the change in trend since 2000.
It might have helped them get a better handle on it if they had used up to date data over a longer time period ..

 

[liveforphysics]

Topaz was $4.50-5.00/Watt, which was pretty good installed cost 5years ago.

Modern solar farms are <$1/Watt installed, even at smaller scales.

1MWh/shipping container battery is poor energy density. Should be >5MWh per 40ft container packaged well.

Modern solar panels package tighter now and make a meaningful amount more power per pannel area, and use improved materials tech to last longer.

Burning traincars of coal has its cost beyond the effort to dig it up and light it. Live like you recognize we are as connected to atmosphere as the blood in our veins, and if we treating it like an unlimited waste dump is an auto-extermination process, not a path forward.

 

[Hillhater]

$1/W is possible in places where labour rates allow.
Those levels of cost have never been achieved in the Western world.
And that is a "nameplate" $/W cost , not a "rated continuous output" wattage which would be closer to $10/W. For something that is still an intermittent, unreliable supply.
A solar panel takes 25+ years to produce the equivalent amount of power to that which it took to manufacture the panel initially.
Basicly, that means , with current technology solar panels cannot be sustainably produced using solar energy.!
You may as well use the energy to provide heat and light directly rather than manufacture solar panels
Solar does not work for 70% of the day
. And of course, Solar is not an effective means of power generation in many parts of the world.
Batteries do not generate any energy, but they do consume large amounts of energy to manufacture

 

[Punx0r]

Those levels of cost have never been achieved in the Western world. [citation needed]

A solar panel takes 25+ years to produce the equivalent amount of power to that which it took to manufacture the panel initially.[citation needed]

Basicly, that means , with current technology solar panels cannot be sustainably produced using solar energy.!
You may as well use the energy to provide heat and light directly rather than manufacture solar panels [citation needed]

Solar does not work for 70% of the day[citation needed]

And of course, Solar is not an effective means of power generation in many parts of the world.[citation needed]

 

[Hillhater]

No citations needed...its all common knowledge !
(This is the adult world ... Do your own home work )

 

[liveforphysics]

At 20% utilization, a 350W panel makes a bit over half a MWh of energy a year. Im aware the aluminum smelting and Silicon purification processes are energy intensive, but nothing like MWh scale, a panel just doesn't weigh enough to need the energy to convert its mass of materials into plasma dozens of times.