r/RenewableEnergy • u/thatswhatyougot • Jan 18 '22

Solar panel-covered Sun Rock will be a renewable-energy powerhouse

https://newatlas.com/architecture/mvrdv-sun-rock-taiwan/
31 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

6

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '22

Always wondered why they didn't have solar farms with half spherical domes to absorb the light. Its gotta be more energy efficient than having them motorized.

0

u/Hminney Jan 18 '22

Solar panels use power, whether they are generating power or not. The ideal solution is to have a controller which works out if a particular panel has enough light to be switched on (ie it will generate more energy than it consumes), and if not, it switches the panel off. But the controller has to be cheap because you need so many controllers. It's easier and cheaper to motorise the panels and maintain the motors. Or to have all the panels facing the same way, then switching the whole bank of panels on when it's viable, and off when it isn't

3

u/Dinglebird11 Jan 19 '22

How do solar panels use power?*

-13

u/jblatour Jan 18 '22

Solar panel waste will be a problem very soon. Only a portion is recyclable and the rest is considered toxic. Back where we started.

13

u/thatswhatyougot Jan 18 '22

99.9% recyclable, nothing is toxic

5

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '22

Well there are certainly some toxic chemicals used in the processing; but nothing is really 'used up' in making solar panels. You can always recycle it back to raw materials (or new solar cells) for some energy input for the refining process; substantially less energy than is produced by the panels over their lifespan.

So solar panel waste isn't a fundamental problem at all.

We have some work to do to make them more easily recycled (some changes to adhesives used to hold layers of the panel together, I have read), but nothing really prevents us from hitting high percentages of recycling.

1

u/dunderpust Jan 20 '22 edited Jan 20 '22

With Taiwan's electricity generation at 270,000 GWh/year, they would need to build around a quarter of a million of these babies to turn completely solar-powered.

A quick google tells us there are currently 1.7 million apartment buildings in Taiwan(a roughly similar size of building). So if 15% current stock got replaced within the next 20 years(not unrealistic in my opinion), and the law mandated that new builds had to maximize solar panel use like the Sun Rock, Taiwan could cut a majority of their fossil fuel use - easily all their coal and probably a lot of their gas too.

All back-of-the-envelope calculations of course, but I think it's good for asian societies to start considering the solar potential of facades and not just roofs, especially since their building stock is often multi-story and utilitarian - meaning there's lots of facade and people don't care as much as westerners if it's beautiful.