The Battle for Reuse "Good Enough" Market: Solar Panel's "Primitive" Recyclers

There is a nascent discussion at SERI R2, 

at EPA, and E-Stewards 

about what the "maximum life" of solar panels are. 

I've had several discussions with experts like Cascadeem.com's Curt Spivey, Veolia's Paul Conca, and solar panel manufacturing experts on what "specification" a panel must meet before a buyer is allowed to be "legitimate". 

Curt and Paul are smart, but they are nervous about their own "accountability" - that they may be held to if they sell their clients' electively upgraded panels overseas.  Other recyclers are taking a strong a priori stand against export of solar panels for reuse.  Note that these are potential sellers of used equipment, discussing which buyers are "legitimate" or "primitive". 

It's a continuation of privilege. No one seems to worry about the mining of raw materials in developing countries, despite the fact that the cleanest virgin material mining is worse than the worst possible recycling. But are the others good enough people to get their electricity from a reused solar panel? If in doubt...

The video above is a 42 year old solar panel sent to Good Point Recycling for end of life recycling. It's widespread "truth" that panels function for 30 years. But that "30 year estimated life" statistic was put in print before any panel was more than 10 years... it was (like "80% of ewaste" stats) made up by someone with zero knowledge of the future life of the panel... ostensibly I'm told it had something to do with a procurement specification or waranty request.  But "30 years" is hocus pocus, not reality.

Reality is about 2 things.

Elective Upgrade - what causes a seller to replace and put a good enough reuse item onto the market.

Good Enough Sale - what causes a buyer to pay for their time, travel, shipping, customs duties, etc. when buying a used item.

Also known as "Supply and Demand".

My dad (black and white photo below) was raised in the Ozarks with a lot of racist assumptions about "others".

My son below was not. In the same period of time, environmentalists views of emerging markets' Tech Sector workers has stagnated. Grow up, Jim Puckett and Basel Action Network. Grow up, SERI. The 1960s called, they want your Third World assumptions back.

The distrust and demonification of globalization by the Right and the Left is already breathing down the back of the geeks of color who are starting to buy used solar panels. For the time being, there is a domestic reuse market of about 15 cents per kilowatt... and no one in the USA is buying the 42 year old panel in the video.

But like CRT desktop monitors that were resold in the USA for $25 each in 1998, which were assumed to be "primitively recycled" in 2008 (CBS 60 Minutes), the reuse market will be defined by the race, and fear of fetish liability, by rich people. When Africans start to buy the solar panels which Americans lose interest in, let's not let unintentionally racist environmentalists cast their aspersions for globalization and externalization onto the Tech Sector in emerging markets.

Africa today has about 170,000 mobile phone towers, but never had new phone sales to justify 10% of that coverage. The "good enough market" extends the mining, refining, carbon life of manufactured goods.

I hope 10 years from now Africa will have 170,000 solar panel fields. The most likely way that demand for electricity will be granted is by putting the expert buyers in charge of their own money and logistics.

Beware racist environmental systems.  

See our demo 10 Minute video of our Vermont off grid solar home that demonstrates even panels hit by hammers to render them obsolete are merely made 30% less efficient.  If you don't arrest the white guy in Vermont who buys sabotaged panels, then we shouldn't create rules to arrest the African #freehurricanebenson guy on the roof with him.