how many barrels of oil does it take to make a solar panel?
how many barrels of oil does it take to make a solar panel?
You’d better have a "sciency" link to back this one up guys.
I’m looking for an answer like this – it takes approximately 3.2 barrels of crude oil to manufacture a solar panel measuring 3 feet by 3 feet, source: science magazine, link: [put linky here]
if you’ve got that kind of answer, awesome! If not, please dont answer this question. Thanks!
Well, a barrel of oil has at least 317kg of CO2
http://numero57.net/?p=255
And a solar panel of 120watts (about 4 feet by 3 feet) has about 150kg of CO2
http://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/237/1/Solar-panel-basics.html
So it’s about .47 barrels to produce the panel.
By the way it’d take about 18 months to pay that CO2 ‘debt’ back.
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I don’t think the comparison is valid. How many cupcakes does it take to make a Chrysler 300? I’m sure a company that makes solar panels probably also uses them on their buildings. And most building are powered by coal or natural gas. So the answer to your question is ZERO barrels of crude oil go into making solar panels.
References :
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Well, a barrel of oil has at least 317kg of CO2
http://numero57.net/?p=255
And a solar panel of 120watts (about 4 feet by 3 feet) has about 150kg of CO2
http://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/237/1/Solar-panel-basics.html
So it’s about .47 barrels to produce the panel.
By the way it’d take about 18 months to pay that CO2 ‘debt’ back.
References :
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Below is a link to a summary of a more scholarly paper from the National Renewable Energy labs. You should be able to find more recent papers, but the linked information is still valid – conservative, by today’s standards. Solar cells today are thinner, and use perhaps only 60% fo the silicon that the 1999 author assumed. Anyway, the energy calculation was 420 kWh/m^2 to make panels.
How the 420 kWh is generated matters greatly, and it will usually not be generated by burning oil or oil derivatives. Solar is NOT generally a replacement for oil. However, according to the second site, a barrel of oil has an energy content of 6.1 x 10^9 joules or ~1700 kWh. But that’s heat energy. I would assume that half of that energy is thrown away if it were used to generate electricity, so the answer would be anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 a bbl of oil to create a 1 m^2 solar panel. This energy is easily returned in a few years, possibly less, if the solar panel is installed in a reasonably sunny location.
References :
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy99osti/24619.pdf
http://www.evworld.com/library/energy_numbers.pdf