Fracking Hell...

The relevant point from hamster's link as I read is this, the answer depends on which solar system you use, solar silicon (the majority of the market) vs thin-fim solar technology

• Crystalline Silicon (c-Si): The first commercial solar modules were made of crystalline silicon (c-Si). These modules are still the most widely produced, comprising more than 70 percent of production in 2006.xiii

Recycling options: Used silicon (Si) wafers can be melted into Si ingots and cut into new wafers. A company located in Freiburg, Germany, is one of the few facilities to provide reuse and recycling services for defective c-Si solar panels.xiv

So I think they can be recycled. I haven't read much about embedded energy used to make the panels vs energy generated as hamster asserted above however and that is a different question to environmental waste.

i need to humbly retract my statement about embedded energy, after more googling. the below is a pretty thorough if slightly out of date review of the available energy payback publications relating to solar PV.

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2006-06-16/energy-payback-roof-mounted-photovoltaic-cells

Interesting and I suspect in the past six years since those studies solar efficiency gains have driven that payback down even further.

The would appear to be basing their efficiency ratio at 35%, which sounds a) high, and is b) based on Australian data.

Unless I misread it?

I don't know what the efficiency is, but if the estimated payback for energy used to make vs energy saved is 2-8 years, even if the efficiency is half the assumed level it comes out ahead since panels must have a life span of 20-25 years?

You filthy fracker, I wonder what tynan has to say about this...

Fracking is fine, if any proven risks can be mitigated, all the misanthropic doomy conspiracy idiots who busy their days wankering on about how it's another candidate in the queue of armageddon trigger candidates can fuck off (after the've turned the incubators and fridges off).

I don't know what the efficiency is, but if the estimated payback for energy used to make vs energy saved is 2-8 years, even if the efficiency is half the assumed level it comes out ahead since panels must have a life span of 20-25 years?

But that means that after 2-8 years you've broken even, only in year (averaging) 6 onward do you start to make energy.

And if the efficiency level is half the projected level, because you are in, for example, Wales, then that's 12 years before you start to see a return.

So you make hay in years 13-20, just as long as other generation techniques have not come along by then, and also just as long as your panels efficiency has not dropped to 5% over the years.

In a strange way the panel could be seen as a kind of battery- we use a gas powered plant to make a panel that then pays back a fraction of that energy over a period of 20 years.

Well, the polysilicon used to make the solar wafers increasingly is made in China, so it's more likely coal-fired power that is charging the battery.

I'm going to give geo-thermal a go, I think if I sink my borehole down the chimney of the flat below me they'll never notice.

Can you extend your well to Indonesia? Their volcanoes are the Saudi Arabia of geothermal.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-15/chevron-bets-on-power-from-30-billion-volcanoes-in-indonesian-rainforest.html

There is currently a campaign to stop proposed fracking in Somerset, just outside Bristol.

http://www.frackfreesomerset.org/

You can watch Gasland here:

http://www.truththeory.org/gasland/

Georgie boy is giving fracking tax credits.

John Gummer to the rescue:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/dec/02/lord-deben-thatcher-green-fracking

Oh, to have a halfway committed politician in charge again who understands some of the issues.

The anti fracking campaign has found an unlikely champion in the form of Bez:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26697322

Probably time for a bump. I forgot this thread existed.

A photo story on years of protest:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/19/seven-years-of-protest-inside-the-fracking-resistance-photo-essay

Plus 'hold the front page'/'who would have thought' type news:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/20/minor-earthquakes-detected-near-cuadrilla-fracking-site-in-lancashire

They’ll simply move the threshold to allow fracking to go ahead if there are tremors above 0.5.

I still can’t see the economic case for it in this country. There’s no shortage of gas on the world markets so they’ll have to get it out the ground bloody cheaply for this to make sense.

Equipment and staffing at PNR is ~£80,000 A DAY!

Would our response to Skripal have been so toothless if we didn’t potentially need Russian gas this winter?

The fracking site is maybe 20miles from my parents house.

I think the whole thing is fucking crackers. They should never have been allowed to do it in the first place

80,000 a day is relatively cheap compared to offshore rates.

Price up a rig, third party crew, support vessel etc....
Gets very expensive over the winter season. A few years ago, we had two days drilling, out of a 21 day shift due to weather being out of limits.

But that’s on offshore fields with guaranteed/known yields.

Cuadrilla says it doesn’t know what the flow rate is going to be in Lancashire. I’m sure they have an idea but this is still exploratory. They’ll have to go back for a full commercial licence.

For it to be viable they will probably need several wells drilled, not just the one, so it could get even worse for those in the area.

There's still lots of dusters in offshore exploration and failures or long delays for planned production wells.

Then once you've got a viable well drilled, you need a production Tree on top of it and then carry out a set of flow tests.. If the flow tests are good, tie the Tree into a manifold and risers to an FPSO. Or link it to a pipeline back to shore.
The costs are bonkers and a only make sense if the oil/gas price is high enough to cover the actual flow rate to surface (not the paper project expected flow rate)

With directional drilling, you can easily have several wells drilled from the same area. A template of 6-8 holes, maybe heading in the same direction, or radiating out if the site is central to the field.

Except for another batch of drill casing being brought to site, you'd not notice

They’ll simply move the threshold to allow fracking to go ahead if there are tremors above 0.5.

You don't say. :)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/09/uk-fracking-rules-on-earthquakes-could-be-relaxed-says-minister