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Industry Trends (Emerging Microgrid Opportunities (Industrial (Off Grid…

- - - - “Contrary to previous assumptions, pollutants such as lead or carcinogenic cadmium can be almost completely washed out of the fragments of solar modules over a period of several months, for example by rainwater.”
      - The problem of solar panel disposal “will explode with full force in two or three decades and wreck the environment” because it “is a huge amount of waste and they are not easy to recycle.”
      - Recent studies agree that PV material availability is not a major concern in the near term, but critical materials might impose limitations in the long term.
      - Today, recycling costs more than the economic value of the materials recovered, which is why most solar panels end up in landfills.
      - “Either recycling becomes economical or it gets mandated, [likely] it will have to be mandated because it won’t ever be economical.
      - Any mechanism that finances the cost of recycling PV modules with current revenues is not sustainable. This method raises the possibility of bankruptcy down the road by shifting today’s greater burden of ‘caused’ costs into the future. When growth levels off then PV producers would face rapidly increasing recycling costs as a percentage of revenues.
      - Perhaps the biggest problem with solar panel waste is that there is so much of it, and that's not going to change any time soon, for a basic physical reason: sunlight is dilute and diffuse and thus require large collectors to capture and convert the sun's rays into electricity. Those large surface areas, in turn, require an order of magnitude more in materials — whether today's toxic combination of glass, heavy metals, and rare earth elements, or some new material in the future — than other energy sources.
    - - Organic Photovoltaics (OPVs)
    - - Silicon
        
        19.9% -24.4% efficient
      - Amorphous silicon
        
        9.4% - 12.3% efficient
      - GaAs III-V
        
        25% - 34% efficient
      - Hybrid
        
        40.6% efficitent
      - Chalcogenide
        
        16.6% - 19.2% efficient
      - Organic photovoltaics.
        
        8.7% efficeint
  - - - Requires accurate wind data using an anemometer and taking readings. Ideally need 1 year of data or 3 months at a minimum. Data can then be compared with local MET site data and extrapolated over a year
  - - - Hydro generation is good where it is possible as it is consistent and reasonably predictable.
      - For a good source of hydro the requirements are a mixture of head of water(drop in height from the collection point to the generator) and the the water flow rate. The larger the larger the head the less flow is required
- - - - Inverters
        
        Required to provide AC power from the batteries.
        
        At times of no generation the inverter has to provide all the power.
        
        If the peak load exceeds the maximum inverter load then either the generator will start in an off grid installation or the mains connection will supply the load
- - - - Advantages/Disadvantages
        
        Levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), for lithium-ion batteries has fallen 35% to $187 per megawatt-hour since the first half of 2018
        
        Have a longer life and are more temperature tolerant (temperatures over 25 deg C will shorten life significantly)
        
        Need more careful management
        
        Need to be fitted with an automatic battery management system
        
        Inverter manufacturers only just setting up their inverters to accept Lithium
      - Tesla Powerpacks
    - - Shorter life than FLAs, 8-12 years
      - No Maintenance
    - - Should last 12-15 years if treated properly
      - Cheapest and arguably the most robust batteries