The horses have ulcers, the ducks have gone and the dogs...

What could be more peaceful than a solar panel plant? All those happy planet-rescuing workers gently assembling little Gaia plates to harvest the sun’s love. Living near one of these rainbow factories must be a daily delight. Or maybe not:

A Devens solar panel plant near several Harvard farms is so noisy the horses have ulcers, the ducks have disappeared and a dog has started gnawing off doorknobs, angry neighbors say.

 

The nonstop noise from Evergreen Solar Inc.’s highly touted plant, which Gov. Deval Patrick has praised as “the leading edge of our clean energy economy,” is driving neighbors crazy and making their animals sick.

 

Don’t forget all the silicon tetrachloride.

 

Tim Blair

 

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Ah yes, silicon tetrachloride. One of the dirty little secrets of clean and green energy.

 

Okay, to be fair, it isn't that much of a problem here in Oz and elsewhere in the West.

 

Environmental regulations require it to be recycled into the manufacturing process for polysilicon.

 

But there is a cost.

 

It takes a lot of energy to do this.

 

It's one of the reasons why solar panels made here are so damn expensive. Even with the government foolishly giving an $8,000 subsidy towards their cost, they are still expensive.

 

And guess where that energy comes from?

 

No, not wind power or solar power.

 

You can't manufacture anything using these useless forms of green vanity window dressing because, simply put, you can't rely on them.

 

You can't be caught in the middle of a manufacturing process and have it shut down because it has become cloudy or the sun has gone down or because the wind has stopped blowing.

 

(That's why the Water Corporation here in Western Australia was forced to withdraw ads that falsely claimed that its desalination plant was run by power produced by wind farms.)

 

So what do the makers of solar panels use? Electricity generated by burning coal or gas.

 

That's right, the very same "dirty" fossil fuels they falsely claim in their ads they are an alternative to.

 

And it takes quite a lot of electricity to make a solar panel, even without having to recycle silicon tetrachloride.

 

Indeed, so much so that some panels will never generate as much electricity as was used to make them in the first place.

 

But that's green economics for you. In this lah-lah land it makes sense to use more energy to produce less!

 

But hey, if you use those "cheaper" Chinese solar panels, that at least helps make it a more sensible proposition doesn't it?

 

Alright, the last I heard, those "cheap" Chinese panels were still costing $14,000. And yes, for the end consumer, given the government subsidy, it probably does make sense because you are being artificially shielded from the real cost of these things.

 

Here's something to think about though. If you follow the link above about silicon tetrachloride, you'll discover one of the reasons why Chinese panels are cheaper than those made in the West.

 

Their solution to the problem of what to do with the toxic silicon tetrachloride is to just take it into surrounding villages and dump it on the ground.

 

How green is that?

 

Posted via email from Garth's posterous