Eroi calculations of renewable energy technology appear to reflect some disagreement on the role of technological improvement.
Eroi of solar panels.
Solar power or nuclear power for example.
Solar panel price 2930 kw.
However when the number is small.
The processing consumes some energy.
Most solar panels are made up of solar cells which are manufactured from silicon.
One your panels will suffer efficiency losses and two electricity costs change.
We took this into account.
Such claim if accurate would call into question many energy investment decisions.
This non metal element must be processed in order to be usable in solar cells.
80 performance for next 15 years.
90 performance for first 10 years.
The panasonic n series of panels are a good quality solar panel with a top efficiency on their 330 watt monocrystalline system of 19 7 and a very impressive temperature coefficient of 0 29 a figure which is equal best with the market leader sunpower.
In fact published eroeis for solar pv and wind might be called misleading.
The result is a serious bias that tends to make the eroeis of solar pv as well as other intermittent energy sources such as wind appear far more favorable than they would be if a level playing field were used.
In the case of photovoltaic solar panels the iea method tends to focus on the energy used in the factory process alone.
That is to say the eroi of solar panels being made in 2013 is quite a bit higher than of solar panels made in 2000.
Eroi values for pv and other renewable alternatives are generally computed without converting the electricity generated into its primary energy equivalent kubiszewski et al 2009 but also without including any of the considerable cost associated with the required energy back ups or storage.
That should be obvious increasing efficiency and lower energy costs per watt make it so.
Abstract a recent paper by ferroni and hopkirk 2016 asserts that the eroei also referred to as eroi of photovoltaic pv systems is so low that they actually act as net energy sinks rather than delivering energy to society.
In 2016 hall observed that much of the published work in this field is produced by advocates or persons with a connection to business interests among the competing technologies and that government agencies had not yet provided adequate funding for rigorous analysis by more neutral observers.
Here are the assumptions we made for the average roi on solar panels.
When the eroi is large that means that producing energy from that source is relatively easy and cost effective.
The epbt of solar panels consistently falls as the technology is continuously improved and it currently stands at about 1 to 2 5 years depending on the type of technology employed and where it is mounted payback times in sunny regions are generally shorter.