Solar Panels and their 2nd Lives

[trad]

Nobody is going to tear out 975MW of panels overnight

Of course you are right. This will take years, and hopefully some of the best can be saved for a 2nd life. The decisions on these huge solar farms are bound to be made at the top, and not necessarily the best decision for every panel.

We need to get solar scaled up to the level of the auto industry, where on every street corner there is solar experts with the know how to squeeze all the juice out of every component before sending them to the crusher.

 

[cs1234]

Come up with a way to make it legal and cheap to install them as grid tied privacy fences / shed/house siding and all our problems are solved.

 

[trad]

Come up with a way to make it legal and cheap to install them as grid tied privacy fences / shed/house siding and all our problems are solved.

Politics, uggh that's the hard part. Once it's legal, it will just happen.

Solar roofing and solar siding, that will really help. But used solar panels aren't just going to magically become roofing or siding. That will be a new product entirely.

 

[cs1234]

Politics, uggh that's the hard part. Once it's legal, it will just happen.

Solar roofing and solar siding, that will really help. But used solar panels aren't just going to magically become roofing or siding. That will be a new product entirely.

I meant for them to be mounted on the side of a house or as a fence.

Clearly it would need some type of mount, and and a cheap microinverter. Solar panels connected to microinverters aren't that dangerous at their single panel voltage (unless they are extremely high voltage panels, which some commercial panels are). Once you have the microinverter, and less stupid mounting rules, all we need is a way to couple it to the electrical panel, which is just a simple breaker in most cases.. an external disconnect for firefighters wouldn't be needed, since it's using microinverters. Make it so the utilities can't whine about interconnect agreements for these types of microinverters, and we're almost done. To avoid overloading the local utility connection points, design a simple CT connection / monitor to work with the microinverters to avoid most grid export.

We have everything we need to do this now, except somebody in government ballsy enough to tell the NEC, utilities and their lobbies to shove it.

 

[trad]

We have everything we need to do this now, except somebody in government ballsy enough to tell the NEC, utilities and their lobbies to shove it.

The NEC is supposed to be all about safety? You mean they might be compromised? That couldn't be....

 

[hwy17]

The NEC is supposed to be all about safety? You mean they might be compromised? That couldn't be....

Compromised by overzealous firefighter committees with Enphase whispering in their ear.

Firefighters are also the reason they started adding poisonous flame retardants to all our furniture, that were only just now finally phasing out again.

 

[cs1234]

The NEC is supposed to be all about safety? You mean they might be compromised? That couldn't be....

The NEC knows who their customers are, and it's not us.

 

[trad]

The NEC knows who their customers are, and it's not us.

Is there any hope?

 

[AntronX]

Is there any hope?

Lobby your city to create a variance for the use of 2nd life solar panels and batteries in offgrid applications. Probably will have to be limited to ground mount / outdoor to reduce fire risk to buildings. Or just do it guerilla style at the risk of not getting insurance payout if your house burns down. One of my goals is to get all my Li-ion batteries installed outside.