Rare Materials In Solar Panels

High performance batteries need lithium which is only easily extracted from briny pools in the andes.

Rare materials in solar panels.

Thin film pv technologies for example contain potentially critical metals such as tellurium. Unfortunately you can t just put the panels out with your. Thin cheap solar panels need tellurium which makes up a scant 0 0000001 percent of the earth s crust making it three times rarer than gold. Cadmium telluride cadmium solar cells are the only thin film product to have rivaled the performance of.

As such solar panels require way more raw materials including glass rare earth elements and heavy metals than other energy sources. So why the interest in rare earth. For example a single tesla vehicle requires about 15 pounds or a bowling ball s worth of lithium and thin cheap solar panels need tellurium one of the rarest elements on earth. In 2011 the average price of rare earth metals shot up by as much as 750 percent.

Amorphous silicon this is a popular material used widely on thin film solar cells. However a lack of rare earths does not mean that the components of solar modules are harmless. However recent research coming out of the netherlands has spotted a red flag to relying on solar panels as a panacea for global emissions problems. The most popular materials in thin film solar cells are as follows.

Here are the common parts of a solar panel. It uses around 1 of the silicon. Silicon solar cells metal frame typically aluminum glass sheet for casing standard 12v wire bus wire plexiglas. Experts have found that the rare metals required to build solar panels such as indium and tellurium are not in sufficient supply to keep up with demand.

Neodymium is a so called rare earth element a silvery metal with a very important role in renewable energy. Terbium and europium are used in thin film solar panels while dysprosium is used to manufacture batteries in most hybrid gas electric vehicles that use magnets.