We fight global warming by eliminating extensive coal usage to power houses, properties, and industries through renewable energy. Unfortunately, even renewable energy creates waste material through discarded panels. Most homeowners remove their solar panel sets within 10-12 years, which is way sooner than the manufacturer-estimated 30-year lifespan.
Here are three common reasons most owners remove their solar panels way ahead of time.
Technical Failures
Even the best solar panel manufacturers and installation teams fail in their expertise sometimes. When this happens, manufacturers and reputable solar panel installers in Littleton, CO, are ready to remedy the issue and replace troublesome panels under warranty. However, it still creates waste material due to poor manufacturing, design, installation, or engineering.
Poor Installations
Top-tier solar panel manufacturing companies only trust dependable solar panel installation teams to install their products. Streamlining this process through certification allows both parties to conduct better business, save time, and offer great value to property owners. However, poor installations of renowned roofers can still happen despite the smallest chance available, leading to premature solar panel removal.
New Technologies
Almost every year, solar panel collection and storage technologies continue to improve. Therefore, most homeowners want in on the new power-saving technology, pulling their old roofs out and in with the new.
Solar panel detachments and waste is slowly becoming a huge problem. Forbes has an excellent exclusive about this — read more about it here.
The last few years have seen growing concern over what happens to solar panels at the end of their life. Consider the following statements:
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.”
“The reality is that there is a problem now, and it’s only going to get larger, expanding as rapidly as the PV industry expanded 10 years ago.”
“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.”
Were these statements made by the right-wing Heritage Foundation? Koch-funded global warming deniers? The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal?
None of the above. Rather, the quotes come from a senior Chinese solar official, a 40-year veteran of the U.S. solar industry, and research scientists with the German Stuttgart Institute for Photovoltaics.
With few environmental journalists willing to report on much of anything other than the good news about renewables, it’s been left to environmental scientists and solar industry leaders to raise the alarm.
“I’ve been working in solar since 1976 and that’s part of my guilt,” the veteran solar developer told Solar Power World last year. “I’ve been involved with millions of solar panels going into the field, and now they’re getting old.”
The Trouble With Solar Waste
The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in 2016 estimated there was about 250,000 metric tonnes of solar panel waste in the world at the end of that year. IRENA projected that this amount could reach 78 million metric tonnes by 2050. (Continued)
If you have yet to find a reliable roofer and solar panel installation team, you can always count on us at Roper Roofing and Solar. Contact us today to learn more about everything that we can do for you.