Is the production/manufacturing of solar panels un-environmentally friendly?
Question:
Answer:
One of the major problems for solar manufacturers to overcome has been the use and neccessity of silicon in panels.. This is a rare metal, this is why it is said to be environmentally hazardous.
However solar manufacturers have gotten around that and are starting to develop other types of solar panels that dont require silicon or much of it.
The production costs of solar panals is coming down, as they are built to be more efficient therefore producing more energy compared to that used in their creation.
My family bought some of the first solar panels in Alaska in the late 1970s. Guess what: some of them still produce power today at our cabin. These panels are extremely old technology compared to what is available now, but if you can get 30 years of energy out of something like that, it has to be better than burning gas in a generator all that time!
yes the production is as environmentally sound as production of anything else in the world. they are produced once and last probably 45 years or so. they more than pay for themselves they allow your home to become energy independant and allow you to sell your excess energy back to energy companies for peak grid times. it is a win win situation that definately polluted much less than being hooked up to a carbon spewing powerplant
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