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What Are the Dangers of Solar Energy Plants?

Solar energy harnesses sunlight and converts it into usable electricity via photovoltaic cells. Engineers can build photovoltaic cells into buildings, electronic devices (such as calculators or watches), cars, planes or boats. Solar farms (also called "solar plants") use rows of photovoltaic cells to capture and convert sunlight, which is then stored in batteries or relayed for power consumption elsewhere.

  1. Manufacture

    • The manufacturing process used to build solar-energy harnessing devices (such as photovoltaic cells) can harm workers or create safety hazards at factories. Factory workers must construct photovoltaic cells using arsenic and cadmium, which are both hazardous materials. The chief component of solar cells is silicon (as polysilicon), and the manufacturing of photovoltaic cells can release the carcinogen crystalline silica dust. Workers exposed to this dust can suffer from cancer, lupus, kidney disease, rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, the autoimmune disorder Sjögren's syndrome and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In addition, accidental spills could expose factory workers to toxins and hazardous chemicals, and a fire at the manufacturing plant can release toxic gases into the atmosphere.

    Waste Disposal

    • The manufacture of solar panels leaves behind a number of toxic by-products. These can include the toxin silicon tetrachloride, the greenhouse gas sulfur hexafluoride and other dusts that can contaminate water and soil. The process to make one ton of polysilicon generates four tons of silicon tetrachloride, and if not disposed of properly, this toxin can render land infertile for growing crops. Also, because silicon-based panels possess only about a 25-year life span, the panels must be disposed of or recycled properly, or else they can contaminate the environment.

    Cost

    • Comparatively speaking, solar energy costs more and is less efficient than fossil-fuel burning methods of producing electricity. The average cost of electricity in the United States is 7 cents per kilowatt-hour. By contrast, solar energy, even with government subsidies, costs 5 to 20 times more. This cost increases if an individual homeowner wants to power a residence with solar energy, because the homeowner must pay the startup costs of installing solar panels. Once installed, these panels will provide "free" electricity, but one study in California showed that it would take 10 years for a home's solar energy production to pay for itself, according to WeatherQuestions.com.

      Also, although free sunlight offsets some of the costs of solar energy, because photovoltaic cells can capture sunlight only under conditions of no cloud cover and during the daytime, solar panels operate at a very low efficiency (about 30 percent). This lowered efficiency results in a reduced amount of electricity produced when compared with fossil-fuel burning.

    Environmental Damage

    • The rows of photovoltaic cells in solar farms take up a vast amount of space. This conversion of land to solar farms can disrupt the local ecology and threaten local wildlife.

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