Comment by mrtksn
2 days ago
We will take the day off I guess as we run the critical stuff on nuclear. I don't fancy nuclear because it's too involved, takes forever to build, its a big deal, needs long term planning. I also don't believe that there are enough smart and trustworthy people to take care of a nuclear infrastructure that powers the world for generations, disasters will happen. Let's use the quick, simple, safe and unlimited potential. Nuclear has its place for sure though.
Solar efficiency degrades over time. When these sites are no longer economical their owners will turn to bankruptcy, we'll have thousands of hectares of green fields covered in disarrayed broken blue panels, overgrown, unmaintained, a public nuisance of massive proportions in the making.
Those locations have a large grid connection, which is valuable enough to pay for the decomissioning / cleanup costs so something else can use the connection.
Heck, there are companies cleaning up coal plants to use the connection for solar or wind, and that's a lot more expensive than cleaning up an old solar plant.
Solar panels are not degradable and are piling up in toxic landfills as are windmill blades.
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Good thing it only takes a couple dudes with impact drivers and a truck to tear that down in under a week. Even a hand truck is good enough to cart a few of them away at a time.
Everything degrades over time.
Yeh, it's not as if they can't replace the solar panels or anything.
Just absolute nonsense. Modern panels are often guaranteed to produce 90% of their nameplate capacity for 25 years and then degrade at something like 0.35%/year afterwards. A panel installed today will likely be generating more than 60% of it's capacity by 2100 and will have done so for 75 years.