That '15 years to return the energy used in manufacture' came from somewhere else, and I can't remember where.
Someone's arse I presume.
Sigh. Why so hostile? If you actually googled you'd find that this is an issue with wide differences of opinion, and has been for a long time.
Apparently the low end accepted energy payback time for modern panels is much better than the 15 years I recalled, so I learn something. For eg
http://www.clca.columbia.edu/236_PE_Magazine_Fthenakis_2_10_12.pdfBut it's *still* something people disagree about. Might have something to do with people's reasons for promoting (or not) solar, since it's easy to make choices in what you count among lifecycle energy inputs.
Consider that nuclear plants are made of silicon, glass, aluminium, silicone rubber and various other materials besides. All have high energy costs of manufacture. That statement by itself is meaningless.
a. Nuclear plants are rather higher power output than solar panels.
b. Despite that, the lifecycle EROEI profitability of nuclear plants is still considered by many to be marginal or actually negative. It's NOT meaningless to remind that any source of energy can involve high energy production costs.
In this case I said it because most people don't even try to consider what it took to make a solar panel. Hey, they're just a big flat thing, weigh little, make electricity, must be a solution to all our energy problems, right?
As for vast solar arrays in deserts - ha ha. The secret word is 'sandstorm'. Also 'shifting dunes' for the booby prize.
They seem to do okay in the US. As for Africa and other more hostile places, I think you will find that not quite the entire continent is ravaged by sand storms and shifting dunes. I think there are even people living there.
"Solar arrays IN DESERTS" comment made because of articles talking about putting vast solar arrays IN DESERTS. Specifically ones in which there are no people. If you apparently have never seen such articles, and are reading comprehension challenged, it's not my problem.
In general I'm sending up people who don't consider the environment in which they are proposing vast infrastructure projects. Wind blown dust dramatically cuts electrical output. Who's going to wipe down thousands of panels? And that's before the panels start getting sandblasted.
But it doesn't have to be desert. I've seen some amusing pics of a big solar panel farm (in Germany I think) where no one bothered to trim the tall plants that grew up between the rows. Heavily shading the panels.
See pic below of another example - in the Newington park in Sydney.
Also, though no one says it, the moment a wind farm pisses off some nearby resident enough to start taking pot shots with a high powered rifle (or applying an oxy-cutter to the tower base, or just cutting the grid connection cables for that matter) all estimates of economic viability go down the drain. Are the generators, gear boxes, pitch motors and inverters bullet proof? Did the profit feasibility study include the cost of 24/7 guarding? I doubt it.
I... That's just do dumb, you should go and try it and see how it works out for you. If you aren't killed by the structure falling on you or electrocuted or otherwise maimed the CCTV footage of you doing it should be quite interesting. Yeah - they have CCTV on those things.
Ha ha.. you and the other guy having conniptions at the mere suggestion. And yet earlier in this thread and the original article, multiple people were talking about how having to put up with light strobing from turbine blades would cause them to 'lose it'. And they're right, it would be completely unacceptable. If you think 100% of people having that forced on them are going to say "Yup. It's unacceptable. I'll just sit here and keep saying that till the problem goes away" then you are a very naive person.
And I question the sanity of planners who didn't take such things into consideration when siting wind farms.
Guns are not widely available in the UK, so maybe they did...
Ha ha ha! Oh wait, you're serious! Let me laugh more. HA HA HA HA!
Ocean wind farms make me laugh. In a salt spray environment, the lifetime of these complex electrical machines is what? I bet it won't be near as long as the investment plan claimed.
True, things like oil rigs, piers, under-sea cable repeaters and the like rarely last more than a few months in that environment. I'm sure the marine engineers who design those things are all idiots and know far less than you do about it.
I've seen what happens to electronics in salt spray environments. I've seen corroded ships being repaired (I was helping with the repairs.) I've seen the insides of very large wind turbines (about 1MW each, in a factory in Sth China). They used heat exchanger cooling, with only the radiator exposed to direct exterior airflow. But that added a lot of complexity, and I'd be surprised if smaller systems do that too.
Maybe ocean wind turbines are hermetically airtight, but I bet they are not.
Also, when you degenerate to strawman arguments like "rarely last more than a few months" you're just making yourself look ridiculous. What did I say? I said "I bet it won't be near as long as the investment plan claimed."
So we'll see who's right, in about a decade or less. If the MTBF and/or working lifespan or uptime are significantly less than expected, that can kill the economics for large investments like that.
Btw, talking about wind turbines failing, it occurs to me if a turbine is acting up during even moderate wind, let alone a raging storm, NO ONE is going to climb up inside the tower and try doing maintenance. So they are kind of all or nothing failure modes.