I thought I'd log in and share some insight, since someone asked about how they're made.
Back in 2011 I spent a few months in a plant that was started to make solar panels. I was absolutely shocked (no pun intended) to see what it takes to make these things. They were depalletized as individual sheets of glass by a robot, cleaned, inspected, laser etched with a serial number, then they went through a pair of massive sputtering machines. One applied (as I recall) molybdenum sulfide and another one which put on something else (sorry, I don't remember what the second machine did) but I do recall the one machine having ducting that went up to multiple scrubbers on the roof of the building because the exhaust from it was so toxic they couldn’t just vent it to the outside.
Next the panels were loaded into crystal racks (I was told these things were like $20,000 a piece) where they were taken by an AGV and put into gas chambers. I don’t know what the gas was, but a component of it was Hydrogen Sulfide, and there was alarms which would go off numerous times a week to tell you to get out immediately. They’d send people in with air tanks and hand-held detectors to see if it was safe to go back in, so you’d just sit out in the parking lot for about half an hour.
After that they’d get removed from the crystal racks and put into stainless steel racks and sent through a chemical bath. The waste water from this process was so toxic that these special hazmat trailers started popping up in the parking lot because they couldn’t find anyone to take them. First there was one, then two, then three, then four… but they must have eventually found some place to take the stuff because one morning we came in and the trailers were gone.
One of the final steps was a having them go into an oven where they were heated to something like 600 degrees C for hours. The final step was adding the wiring/connector and putting a frame around the panel. I’m sure there’s a few things I missed, but that’s an overview of it. One of the engineers from the plant joked that it would be a miracle if those panels actually produced, over their lifespans, the energy it took to manufacture them. But you know, it’s “green”. Or something.
And by the way, I'm not opposed to solar as a concept, but I think context matters. If you're trying to do some off the grid thing, with a cabin in the mountains, then sure, solar makes a lot of sense. But to start replacing our existing infrastructure with it doesn't make much sense to me. But then I guess not much of anything makes much sense anymore.
