Solar photovoltaic module production: Environmental footprint, management horizons and investor goodwill

Sunderasan, Srinivasan; Kottam, Vamshi Krishna Reddy

doi:10.1016/j.rser.2017.08.031

Cited by 30 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Commonly, environmental effects of processes are measured by the life cycle assessment. Recently, there have been many publications related to life cycles assessment of the PV modules (Jungbluth, 2005; Latunussa et al, 2016; Luo et al, 2018; Srinivasan & Kottam, 2018). Liang Xu reports that PV module production includes many steps, such as material mining, semi raw material production, solar cell production, assembling PV module, transporting, installing and end-of-life recycling.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For 1 kW PV module production, it is estimated to release 80,113 kg of CO 2 for subsidising the raw material (Domínguez and Geyer, 2017). However, compared with fossil-based coal burning systems, for the same amount of electricity power generation, the PV modules production phase emits 3.3% less (Srinivasan and Kottam, 2018).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the one hand, recycling the wastes of PV modules brings waste minimisation and raw material saving, but on the other hand it is a great source of carbon release to the atmosphere and so decreases the countries carbon footprint. Today, this release can be observed at a country level, yet, in the years that recycling will be taking place, it is going to be much more important than today because of climate change and increasing levels of industries and population (Luo et al, 2018; Srinivasan and Kottam, 2018).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Environmental and economic evaluation of solar panel wastes recycling

Gönen

Kaplanoğlu

2019

Waste Manag Res

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Owing to rising population and increasing energy demand, renewable energy resources become the most convenient and promising solution. Hence, solar power plant investments and photovoltaic module numbers have risen sharply. Turkey is one of the tight followers of the energy trends, thanks to its rising energy demand and economic power. However, the consequences of the massive plant wastes importance in term of economically and environmentally have not been understood yet. Almost 70% of the modules are formed by glass and the rest accumulates economically valuable metal materials, which are silver, aluminium and copper. These three main materials are substantially important in the overall waste. Not only the economic value, but also the environmental impacts of the mining effluents to excavate these metals are causing emission problems. As a chain reaction, the higher energy demand triggers a search for new and renewable energy resources. This is why popularity of solar energy has increased. Solar energy can be absorbed and transformed through photovoltaic modules, which contain glass and three main metals. In order to respond for the production of modules, metals are fundamental. This need triggers the need of metals mining excavations and emissions. In this respect, in the near future, thanks to the rising investments on photovoltaic modules and the CO2 emissions coming from mining, the wastes of photovoltaic modules and the need of recycling will become more important. That is why, in this study it is aimed to present environmental benefits and economic recoveries of recycling photovoltaic module in Turkey.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Environmental and economic evaluation of solar panel wastes recycling

Gönen

Kaplanoğlu

2019

Waste Manag Res

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“…The environmental aspect, in terms of everything that is produced by humans, is an important matter that has been highlighted in the last decade [43,44]. Current interest in renewable energy, especially organic solar panels, and perhaps in the near future, all-weather solar cells, brings a question: what should we do with the energy harvesting devices when they are no longer needed for use?…”

Section: Environmental Aspects In All-weather Solar Cellsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bi-Triggering Energy Harvesters: Is It Possible to Generate Energy in a Solar Panel under Any Conditions?

Bogdanowicz

2021

Energies

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In this review, the concept of a hybrid solar cell system, called all-weather solar cells, a new view on energy harvesting device design, is introduced and described in detail. Additionally, some critical economical, technological, and ecological aspects are discussed. Due to drastic global climate changes, traditional energy harvesting devices relying only on solar energy are becoming less adaptive, hence the need for redesigning photovoltaic systems. In this work, alternative energy harvesting technologies, such as piezoelectric and triboelectric devices, and photoelectron storage, that can be used widely as supporting systems to traditional photovoltaic systems are analysed in detail, based on the available literature. Finally, some examples of all-weather solar cells composed of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) and silicon solar cells, often modified with graphene oxide or phosphors materials, as new perspective trends in nanotechnology are presented. Two types of solar cell triggers are analysed: (i) solar cells working during day and night (DSSC with phosphors materials), and (ii) solar cells working under sun and rain conditions (piezoelectric and triboelectric silicon or DSSC solar cells).

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“…The EU 2020 Climate & Energy package targeted an increase in the share of renewable energy sources up to 20% in EU countries [5]. Therefore, investments in renewable energy sources are necessary [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Solar energy is a major renewable source to generate electricity through photovoltaic cells [15][16][17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reliability-Oriented Design of a Solar-PV Deployments

2021

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Increasing restrictions on the emission of greenhouse gases by the standards and the European Union’s policy aims at increasing the share of renewable energy sources in the energy mix of the Member States. Subsequently, we observe a rapid increase in the installed capacity of the renewable energy sources. Renewable energy sources are currently the fastest growing sectors of energy generation, specifically the photovoltaic sector. In 2005, the total installed capacity in photovoltaic installations in the European Union was about 2.17 GW, while in 2019 it was already over 130 GW. Currently, due to many forms of incentive governmental measures the construction of photovoltaic installations is rapidly increasing with installations mounted on private houses and buildings. The article presents selected issues concerning the failure modes of photovoltaic installations and a comparative assessment of the estimated and the real measured electrical production of an operational photovoltaic installation. The Solar-PV power plant design approach proposed in the paper considers the failure modes to enhance the plant’s reliability.

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Solar photovoltaic module production: Environmental footprint, management horizons and investor goodwill

Cited by 30 publications

References 14 publications

Environmental and economic evaluation of solar panel wastes recycling

Environmental and economic evaluation of solar panel wastes recycling

Bi-Triggering Energy Harvesters: Is It Possible to Generate Energy in a Solar Panel under Any Conditions?

Reliability-Oriented Design of a Solar-PV Deployments

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