The problem with falsehoods is that if they get repeated often enough, they start to sound plausible. And misinformation about clean energy increasingly matters because it can shape whether communities support projects in the first place. As clean-energy campaigners have learned, sometimes the answer is to get there before the myth does.
So, let’s bust a few.
Yes, they are.
A solar panel contains materials with real value, including glass, aluminium, copper and silver. The problem isn’t whether we can recycle panels. It’s building the collection and recycling industry required to do it economically at enormous scale.
That’s already happening. PV Industries’ Sydney facility can process about 200,000 panels annually and recover up to 90% of a panel by weight. The Australian government is also funding a $24.7 million (USD 17.34 million) national pilot that aims to recycle up to 250,000 panels while working out how a national system should operate.
Verdict: Panels are recyclable. Australia’s recycling system is simply younger than its solar industry.
This one usually begins with a wonderfully ominous phrase: heavy metals.
Which ones? In what quantity? And how exactly are they escaping from an intact panel?
Some PV technologies contain small quantities of potentially hazardous substances, which is one reason proper end-of-life recycling matters. But a functioning solar panel isn’t a loose pile of its constituent ingredients. Solar cells are encapsulated inside a module engineered to survive decades outdoors.
Treating the materials inside a sealed panel as though they’re simply washing into the paddock is rather like looking at everything inside your television and assuming it’s leaking onto the living-room carpet.
Verdict: End-of-life disposal needs to be managed properly. An intact solar panel is not quietly dissolving into the ground.
This one presents a false choice: food or electricity.
Drive to the New England Solar Farm near Uralla and you’ll find something inconvenient for that argument: sheep. More than 6,000 of them have grazed beneath roughly one million panels in the project’s first 400 MW stage.
This idea even has a name: agrivoltaics.
An earlier NSW solar-grazing trial found enough moisture remained beneath shaded panels for grass to continue growing during hot, dry conditions. The panels provided sheep with shade and lambing ewes with protection, while grazing helped control vegetation.
None of this means we should indiscriminately cover Australia’s best cropping country in panels. We shouldn’t. We should also put far more solar on warehouses, factories and other commercial roofs.
But grazing and electricity generation can occupy the same paddock. Not only that but in many cases a farmer will receive rental income for hosting the panels which can help make their farm drought proof.
Verdict: Sometimes solar doesn’t replace farming. It joins it.
Sure. Hail can break solar panels. It can also break windscreens, roof tiles and skylights. That doesn’t mean we stop making cars, houses or windows.
Solar panels are specifically tested for hail impact. The IEC 61215 certification test includes firing a 25 mm ice ball at a panel at about 23 metres per second – roughly 83 kmh. Manufacturers can and do test beyond that baseline.
Can an extraordinary Australian hailstorm overwhelm those specifications? Absolutely. “Designed to withstand hail” doesn’t mean “indestructible.”
Verdict: Hail is a risk solar panels are engineered and tested to withstand, not some previously undiscovered fatal flaw.
And perhaps that’s the common thread running through all five myths.
Solar isn’t magical. It isn’t indestructible. It doesn’t have zero environmental impact and it doesn’t maintain itself. But it’s far better than this bullshit and the bullshit alternative of fossil fuels, especially in Australia, where no shit, fossil fuels cost more.
They do, and this is where we should acknowledge something the solar industry itself occasionally gets wrong.
Solar doesn’t mean maintenance-free.
Modern panels commonly carry long performance warranties, often more than 25 years, and are designed to operate for decades. But a solar systemincludes inverters, wiring, isolators, mounting equipment and other components. Things can fail. Connections deteriorate. Debris accumulates. Equipment needs inspection.
That’s not evidence solar doesn’t work. That’s evidence solar is infrastructure.
Verdict: Solar lasts. Look after it.
Author: Daniel Lazarus, Managing Director, Industrias
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.
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