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Forum Index : Solar : nearly mainstream..nearly..
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poida Guru  Joined: 02/02/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1418 |
https://onestepoffthegrid.com.au/second-hand-panels-australias-massive-wasted-solar-opportunity/ second hand panels. still got 15 years use left. such a waste.. We all know this and we all know that a 25 year estimated lifetime for a panel that will deliver 100% of rated output at year 0 then get down to 80% at year 25 is very good value. 5 year old panels of zero cost/worth are actually 95% capable panels with zero cost. A f$*king bargain. Let me put it this way: you pay $1.60 per litre for regular petrol for the car. How about I give it to you for nothing but it's got only 95% of the energy component? And your car will run happily on this too. Which is the better deal? wronger than a phone book full of wrong phone numbers |
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| Solar Mike Guru Joined: 08/02/2015 Location: New ZealandPosts: 1138 |
Follow the money, there is no profit to make on 2nd hand PV as it cannot be certified for any installation; companies would rather trash them and sell you NEW ones and they cannot give them away as it cuts into their profit margins. Makes you wonder if they have broken even with the energy to produce them after such a short time frame of use. Send them to NZ, no second hand ones available here. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
How Typical. An article by a totaly leftist green pandering Publication prints: "Engerer, who lives on a rural property in northern New South Wales, takes a trailer of his own rubbish to the tip around once a month." I'm the biggest grot and most untidy person I know but I couldn't generate enough Rubbish to take to the tip once a month if I tried. All this green " avoid over packaging" and " Recycle" Malarkey and this guy is dropping off a trailer load a Month??? Like I said, Typical. I don't think most people realise the scale of the problem. This came up on the washing machine forum a while back and the greentards there ever ready to make up any Bs to defend the cause kept going on like it was a nothing problem. They stupidly claim they can be " Recycled" as if that takes all the sins in emissions and use of resources away but in fact, only a small part of them is recycled. I have seen the Promo BS for the place in Melbourne and it's a crock. Brother in law who is in the waste industry says that a fraction of the glass, like all other glass, is actually recycled. The rest is often dumped as fill which they then call, recycled when in fact it never really becomes a useful product at all. Toughened glass is very difficult / impossible to recycle wherever it comes from so it's not viable to bother... like with many materials like cardboard, plastic and others. Some months back one of my local Suppliers had 400 odd 250W trina panels stacked up they had replaced from a factory. Story was some had failed and because they could not get the direct replacements anymore, Insurance paid for a whole new system. I saw 4x 20Kw 3 phase Inverters as well. I picked up 80 panels but the people removing them had butchered most cutting the leads off and pretty short. I picked up about 20 of them for someone that wanted them for battery charging but of course so far hasn't shown to get them. My suppliers are happy for me to take them. They often have to pay to get rid of the things. I have also been buying brand new panels. Once they fall off the CEC BS approval list, they can't be re used. I had about 25 Kw of used panels on my house but have now got enough brand new ones, mainly 270's but plenty of 360's and some 400's, to redo everything and still have plenty left over. I probably have about 200 panels up the back atm. I have been sorting them out last few weeks putting them on pallets so I can move them round with the tractor and Labelling what they are. If ever lockup finishes I'll start advertising them again. Certainly it's a work out going through them testing the things and then re stacking them. There are VERY few that I have found have failed be they quality or no name brands. atm, the known brands have a much higher failure rate than the no names so not a great deal to be said for quality there and some of the major brands are renowned in the industry for giving warranty claims endless run around or just outright refusal on all kinds of BS excuses. One company even deems all their panels to be perfect when they leave the factory which then transposes to any damage or defect must have happened after they were in their control so no warranty. The reason 99% of panels are scrapped is because the stupid and idiotic rules made up by the industry body ( Putting the fox in charge of looking after the chicken house ) keep changing in the name of " Safety" some of these new safety regulations have amounted to how many grounding holes are pre punched in the panel Frame. Only one is required ( if you believe even that!) but I think the current standard is they must have 8. If you have a new, perfectly good panel but it does not have 8 grounding holes, only 6, then it is deemed Unsafe and not fit for use. And that's just the new panels. Anything over 2 years old is automatically a lost cause with the changing regs and going back further than that is a waste of time. Ironically, far and away the biggest safety issue with solar installs is the manical requirement to have rooftop isolators which have been shown over and over to cause fires yet they are trying to tell us a panel with only 6 earthing holes is dangerous? I used all second hand panels on my install and didn't have a problem. I had one go bad which was a Trina known to have problems. Replaced it with the same type panel and all good. Many panels I sell go to the country where they are used by people for solar installs on homes, sheds, for keeping batteries on equipment topped up, for water pumping, gate energising... you name it. I sell all I can take and was even thinking of buying a small truck before all this Convid flu came along so I could take more up there and other places. There has been one Crown from up north doing the rounds for a while and the prices they charge for used panels are nothing sort of stupid. Still, they are selling a few, not a lot but a few. It makes me laugh that people worry when buying a new system about having 20 and 25Yr warranties when the average age of the panels I am getting is 5-7 years and falling. One of the last lots I got I looked up and came out only 4 years earlier which meant they could have been as little as 2 Yo. Owner put them up then decided he wanted a bigger system. Can't have the old and the new with current regs so bought them off him and saved them from the scrap. I have seen what the article mentions, there are people out there buying all they can to send to the middle east and Africa. All the ones I have come across are offensive mongerels that want to pay $10 ea and make you jump through hoops. have a similar approach when replying to ads so I don't bother now but they do make it harder for locals to get used panels. I have grave concerns for the future of the grid here with all the Green ideal of demolishing Coal plants for unreliables but the thing is there is no storage bing built to back that up. I think used panels might become Real sort after in the not too distant future when the unreliability and price of power sends a lot of people off grid. That said, Many of these solar farms are designed/ planed for 7-10 yr lives. These farms have thousands to 10's of thousands of panels and that will become a real waste problem because the last thing these setups do would be to allow anything useful to be sold off. Someone might use them to make their own power and not buy what they generate. It's already become a Huge issue in the states where some of these farms have literally been bulldozed into a heap or shoved into a Gully and dirt pushed over the top and called good. Even if these are exported en masse, I see that being a limited thing. Won't take long for all the first world to get onto it and the 3rd world to get their fill and then there will just be another E waste problem. Was the same when TV's and computers and office stuff first started being sent. Was great when these people could suddenly afford a TV but once they had one and a computer and DVD... they weren't going to buy 12 of them especially on their meagre incomes that make anything beyond food a luxury. |
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Clockmanfr Guru Joined: 23/10/2015 Location: FrancePosts: 429 |
This is a company that has been going many many years here in Europe. They are French based and seem to collect old stock by the Container loads. http://www.emat-de.com/home/clearance Edited 2021-07-23 16:32 by Clockmanfr Everything is possible, just give me time. 3 HughP's 3.7m Wind T's (14 years). 5kW PV on 3 Trackers, (10 yrs). 21kW PV AC coupled SH GTI's. OzInverter created Grid. 1300ah 48v. |
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| Davo99 Guru Joined: 03/06/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1578 |
Incredible! Panels by the many tens of thousands. Makes you wonder how many Million a year they are making. |
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