Impact of solar panels on global climate

[Darnok]

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nclimate2843.pdf

We find that solar panels alone induce regional cooling by converting incoming solar energy to electricity in comparison to the climate without solar panels. The conversion of this electricity to heat, primarily in urban areas, increases regional and global temperatures which compensate the cooling effect. However, there are consequences involved with these processes that modulate the global atmospheric circulation, resulting in changes in regional precipitation.

So much for clean alternative energy source. I wonder how much chemicals is released to environment to produce solar panel?

[vger]

Am I misreading that quote? Surely using solar panels to run an electric heating unit is better than using a coal-burning power plant?

[Darnok]

Am I misreading that quote? Surely using solar panels to run an electric heating unit is better than using a coal-burning power plant?

Why it is better?

Scale difference is also obstacle to see problem... if we would replace every coal power plant with solar panels then it would be very harmful to environment.

[vger]

Why it is better?

Scale difference is also obstacle to see problem... if we would replace every coal power plant with solar panels then it would be very harmful to environment.

I'm not saying it necessarily is, but then, it appears that without spending $100 I can't see any further details.

The summary doesn't compare using heat converted from electricity through coal burning to heat converted from electricity through solar energy.

It may simply be that when all you want is heat, burning something is a better option. But then you're better just lighting a fire in your own home instead of using a remote source of electricity for it. Because then you're just wasting energy converting heat to electric, only to convert it back to heat.

Edited November 6, 2015 by vger

[K^2]

Why it is better?

Seriously? Option a) You produce just the waste heat + carbon. Option You produce same waste heat, but also reduce heating somewhere else. You also do not release carbon.

You don't see how that's better?

Chemicals used in solar panel production are a problem. But we are working on reducing this impact. Less than a decade ago, it took more energy to make a solar panel than it could produce in its life time, so solar panel use was just an export of carbon production. Modern solar panels produce 3-4 times as much energy as went into creating them. And this is rapidly improving.

We can do way, way better with solar than just about any other energy source.

[KerikBalm]

Option #1: Coal power

Releases CO2 which results in more energy from the sun being trapped as heat.

Releases energy in the form of heat at the site of the power plant

Consumption of electricity produced by the power plant in cities locally increases the heat in the cities.

Option #2: Solar power

Cools the area around the solar plants as sunlight is captured to make electricity

Consumption of electricity produced by the solar panels in cities locally increases the heat in the cities.

As usual... massive logic failures from Darnok.

"if we would replace every coal power plant with solar panels then it would be very harmful to environment."

Utter garbage. You should be ashamed of yourself.

[fredinno]

Option #1: Coal power

Releases CO2 which results in more energy from the sun being trapped as heat.

Releases energy in the form of heat at the site of the power plant

Consumption of electricity produced by the power plant in cities locally increases the heat in the cities.

Option #2: Solar power

Cools the area around the solar plants as sunlight is captured to make electricity

Consumption of electricity produced by the solar panels in cities locally increases the heat in the cities.

As usual... massive logic failures from Darnok.

"if we would replace every coal power plant with solar panels then it would be very harmful to environment."

Utter garbage. You should be ashamed of yourself.

"But then we would get global COOLING!"

[Wjolcz]

Why it is better?

Scale difference is also obstacle to see problem... if we would replace every coal power plant with solar panels then it would be very harmful to environment.

Are you serious? Have you ever lived in a city with air that is barely breathable during winter, because people burn coal/rubber/plastic bags to keep their houses warm? I do live in such a place and I hate it.

Edited November 6, 2015 by Veeltch

[Streetwind]

The way I read this, the main worry is regional climate change - reducing rainfall in certain areas resulting in desertification, while at the sametime increasing it elsewhere and causing flooding.

I would imagine that this aplies mostly to utility scale solar, though, and not to home installations where electricity generation and consumption is located in the same space.

[magnemoe]

Seriously? Option a) You produce just the waste heat + carbon. Option You produce same waste heat, but also reduce heating somewhere else. You also do not release carbon.

You don't see how that's better?

Chemicals used in solar panel production are a problem. But we are working on reducing this impact. Less than a decade ago, it took more energy to make a solar panel than it could produce in its life time, so solar panel use was just an export of carbon production. Modern solar panels produce 3-4 times as much energy as went into creating them. And this is rapidly improving.

We can do way, way better with solar than just about any other energy source.

I don't really get this, solar panels produce no pollution (outside of producing them) they cover pretty small areas compared to other large scale use like roads not to talk about farming who has more environment effects.

This will be the case even if we got most of our energy from solar.

Cities are warmer because they have lots of roads and concrete absorbing more heat, not because they use a lot of energy.

Burning coal produce lots of pollution including co2. If we talk about heat then both fossil fuel and nuclear and guilty here both produce lots of heat far more than the electricity produced.

[Elthy]

I doubt even large scale solar power would influence the local climate any more than e.g. large asphalted areas or artificial lakes. The biggest possible impact would be floating solar panels over a lake like it is done in Japan (since space is valuable there), this can be dangerous for the local plants/animals in the lake...

[vger]

"But then we would get global COOLING!"

Seriously, who cares? It's a lot easier to generate heat than to get rid of it. With a little ingenuity, we'd have no trouble growing food during an ice age. Making life bearable in a perpetual global warming heat-wave though? Ugh...

[Gaarst]

Reading the entire article (at least the conclusion) actually helps understanding there should not even be a debate as originally stated by OP:

Overall, regardless of its capacity (as large as ∼800 TW or a more realistic projection of 45 TW), the potential global mean climate changes induced by the use of solar panels are small in comparison to the expected climate change owing to fossil fuel consumption, which could raise the global mean temperature by a few degrees by 2100 relative to pre-industrial climate21. However, some of the regional climate changes induced by solar panels could be much greater than the global mean.

You can't just create a debate whilst having only read the introduction of an article.

PS: If there's any issue with quoting a limited access article, please tell me.

Edited November 6, 2015 by Gaarst

[Streetwind]

With a little ingenuity, we'd have no trouble growing food during an ice age.

Fun fact: we are in an ice age right now. It's called the Quarternary Glacation. Specifically, we're in an interglacial, which is a relatively short (10,000-20,000 years) intermission between the glacials (the really big cold surges). And from historical evidence, this interglacial (called the Holocene) has already been going on for a while and ought to be ending "sometime soon" (which can be understood as sometime in the next couple millenia). Though scientists are still arguing whether that will actually happen, or whether human influence has already artifically delayed or outright cancelled the next glacial.

Outside of ice ages, Earth has almost no permanent ice at all. Perhaps some temporary freezing during winters, but none of that permaforst stuff we see today in many northern and southern latitudes. Even the poles are just about completely free of ice. And yes, this would make our world dramatically different for us to live in... so be glad we're in an ice age

Edited November 6, 2015 by Streetwind

[Darnok]

Option #1: Coal power

Releases CO2 which results in more energy from the sun being trapped as heat.

Releases energy in the form of heat at the site of the power plant

Consumption of electricity produced by the power plant in cities locally increases the heat in the cities.

Option #2: Solar power

Cools the area around the solar plants as sunlight is captured to make electricity

Consumption of electricity produced by the solar panels in cities locally increases the heat in the cities.

As usual... massive logic failures from Darnok.

"if we would replace every coal power plant with solar panels then it would be very harmful to environment."

Utter garbage. You should be ashamed of yourself.

If you create cold spot in one place and hot spot in other then how it is going to work?

Maybe my logic is wrong, but IMO it will create artificial winds... that will change local climate... and if we put near every capitol solar power plant then we change global climate.

Of course it is little change as little as fraction of CO2 we produce?

- - - Updated - - -

Seriously, who cares? It's a lot easier to generate heat than to get rid of it. With a little ingenuity, we'd have no trouble growing food during an ice age. Making life bearable in a perpetual global warming heat-wave though? Ugh...

But dinosaurs lived during heat wave? No ice on poles back then and what was with all that plants and animals did they suffered back then?

[Elthy]

Those Cold/Hotspots are way to small to matter, there are other effects that are stronger by magnitudes...

The dinos were adjusted to those temperatures, the current flora/fauna isnt. It would result in a gigant hunger wave and mass extinction...

[peadar1987]

If you create cold spot in one place and hot spot in other then how it is going to work?

Maybe my logic is wrong, but IMO it will create artificial winds... that will change local climate... and if we put near every capitol solar power plant then we change global climate.

Of course it is little change as little as fraction of CO2 we produce?

- - - Updated - - -

Are you suggesting an alternative? Because as far as I can see, the only one that doesn't suffer from exactly the same problem, only to a greater degree, is to do away with power generation altogether, which I'm sure you don't want.

[Streetwind]

But dinosaurs lived during heat wave? No ice on poles back then and what was with all that plants and animals did they suffered back then?

That's not relevant though, isn't it? They lived back then, and were comfortable back then. We live today, and are comfortable today. They would not be comfortable today. We would not be comfortable back then.

It's not about changing climate destroying all life; life doesn't care. Changing climates only destroys us and our familiar environment, and replaces it with something else that isn't us.

[Jovus]

Oh, look, the abstract of a paywalled paper. Well, nothing interesting to see here, since we don't actually get to read the study.

Really, most of all I'm interested to see how they justify:

We find that solar panels alone induce regional cooling by converting incoming solar energy to electricity in comparison to the climate without solar panels.

because that's not obvious at all. Solar panels generally increase local albedo, therefore leading to more heat, not less.

But then, after all,

Here we model the effects of an idealized large-scale application of renewable energy on global and regional climate relative to a background climate of the representative concentration pathway 2.6 scenario (RCP2.6; ref. 5).

...so you're modelling a completely fictitious situation anyway, which must be nice because it means your model can never be falsified. And someone gave you a grant for this?

[Streetwind]

Oh look, Jovus is volunteering to do it better.

[Guest]

In my mind, the effect of solar panels on global climate is a minuscule concern compared to :

1. Solar panels do not produce electricity at all at night and efficiency is greatly impacted by clouds.

2. Costs and impacts of creating a power transmission grid to connect and distribute power from all the solar panel farms, not to mention the inherent inefficiencies with such a large transmission system.

I like the solar panels that I own. But, I think that is their primary use going forward, local use. They are good for maintaining the batteries for my car, lawn mower, and RV. I just don't think it's economical to go beyond that. If I had a choice, zero dollars of my tax money would go to solar panel subsidies. If a private group wants to fund solar panel development, fine, do what you want. Just don't use my money.

[StarStreak2109]

You cannot compare solar power to coal power. In coal power you release carbons that have been trapped in the earth for MILLIONS of years. In fact in the 150 or so years since the beginning of the industrialisation, mankind has managed to burn a sizable chunk of the fossile fuels that have taken said MILLIONS of years to form. So IMHO it is a no-brainer that we have to stop doing so ASAP.

Now with solar power you have the problem that it takes up immense amounts of space to generate the same power such as a small coal power plant. OTOH that power is emission-free, as long as you only look "post-production". If you count in the production of the solar cells, you look at an amortisation period of three years. That means after three years you have saved more CO2 than you needed to produce the solar cells.

BTW, for onshore wind turbines, the time for CO2 amortisation is only half a year.

What's more, please don't get me started on global warming. First of all, I believe that there are nowhere near enough solar power farms on the earth to it having a measurable effect globally. Maybe they have a local effect, I don't know. But IMHO, there is no person on earth that has sufficient data to make a scientifically sound statement on global warming. For that we would need data that goes back MILLIONS of years and the actual logging of climate data is only for a few hundred years. The rest is meta-data...

[Darnok]

...so you're modelling a completely fictitious situation anyway, which must be nice because it means your model can never be falsified. And someone gave you a grant for this?

Please tell me how to falsify Big Bang or Global warming model This is issue I am talking about in many threads, science is creating artificial models that can't be falsified without going outside of that model.

Edited November 6, 2015 by Darnok

[KerikBalm]

Yea... I also wondered about the idea that solar panels would make an area cooler... sure some energy is captured to do usefull work before being turned to thermal energy... but most solar panels are already much darker than the surroundings... although I suppose it depends on the type of solar. If it uses a solar collector (ie a bunch of mirrors) instead of a PV system, the results may be different.

It should also be kept in ind that a 100% efficient solar panel that captures the entire visible light spectrum would be completely black, but it wouldn't heat up like a normal black thing in sunlight.... but I think its only recently they've made PV systems capable of getting over 30% efficiency... still, the "effective albedo" would be lower than you'd think when you look at them. One may look dark... but only 70% of that darkness would be due to absorbing light that causes it to heat up... and 30% would be due to absorbing light that is then used to produce electricity.

Anyway... if we simply covered all of the roads in the US with PV systems... there would be a massive energy surplus (granted storage would still be a problem... unless there was a worldwide energy grid, large parts of the surface of the earth are always illuminated after all).

The electricity usage in a city shouldn't change much in this scenario... and the urban heat effect is mainly due to all the pavement and buildings changing albedo... not electric usage.

The cities would be no hotter (if energy costs of renewables are higher, we can expect less per capita electric usage... if the system results in cheaper electricity in the long run... maybe there is more energy usage).

Assuming the solar farms make things a bit cooler, it could affect the local weather... which is the point of the paper....

Keeping in mind that cities and urban sprawl and auto usage already have had massive effects on local weather... this is minor in comparison.

Its an interesting mental excercise... but the effect is clearly orders of magnitude smaller than our current ridiculous course.

Its also immediately reversible by tearing down the solar plants... that CO2 in the atmosphere is going to be there a long.... long.... long time...

Please tell me how to falsify Big Bang or Global warming model This is issue I am talking about in many threads, science is creating artificial models that can't be falsified without going outside of that model.

Similar to how one would falisfy evolution...

As it has been famously said...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precambrian_rabbit

The big bang predicts that the universe formed ~13.7 billion years ago, and a specific timeline of things cooling down, stars and galaxies coalescing, etc.

Relativity tells us that the farther away we look, the farther back in time we look.

Finding a well formed galaxy with a spectral signature characteristic of an old age (heavier elements are synthesized over time as stars fuse hydrogen) 13.7 billion light years away would do it... like finding a precambrian rabbit.

Likewise, we know how long a red dwarf should last... red dwarfs should last a long long long long time... much longer than the age of the universe as predicted by the big bang.

Finding a Red dwarf at the end of its life cycle a mere 13.7 billion years after the earliest it could supposedly form, would put serious doubt on the theory.

So far, we've found nothing older than it should be, and nothing that formed earlier than it could have under the Big bang theory.

So... it could be falsified if it was wrong. So far there's no evidence that has been found that could falisify it, which is why people think it is true.

Edited November 6, 2015 by KerikBalm

[peadar1987]

Please tell me how to falsify Big Bang or Global warming model This is issue I am talking about in many threads, science is creating artificial models that can't be falsified without going outside of that model.

Big Bang: Develop an alternative explanation, consistent with current information, develop analytical and experimental means of testing it, perform the tests. Open it up to scrutiny from peers, if they find no significant flaws after their own analysis and tests, then maybe you're onto something.

Global Warming: Same thing. Link the observed rise in temperatures to something other than increased levels of the known greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, or disprove that there is a rise in temperatures at all. If you can find something hitherto unknown that has been causing the rise, you will probably win a Nobel Prize.