Do Solar Panels Use More Energy to Manufacture than They Actually Produce?
Quick answer: No. A modern silicon solar panel produces as much energy as it took to make in about a year, according to Fraunhofer ISE, and then keeps producing for 25 to 30 years or more. The idea that panels never pay back their manufacturing energy is decades out of date.
It’s a claim that still circulates online: solar panels take more energy to make than they’ll ever produce. It isn’t true for today’s panels, and it hasn’t been true for years. Here’s what the research shows.
Making panels does take energy
That part of the claim is fair. Purifying silicon into crystals takes a lot of heat and electricity. So does making the glass and aluminum frame, manufacturing the cells, shipping the panels and building the racking and inverters. All of that energy has to be paid back before a panel starts adding to the world’s energy supply.
How long the payback takes
Researchers call this the energy payback time: how long a system has to run before it has produced as much energy as it took to make. For silicon solar systems today, it’s about a year. Fraunhofer ISE’s 2026 Photovoltaics Report puts it at roughly 1.1 years for systems in Northern Europe and about 0.9 years in Southern Europe. Sunnier locations pay back faster, and much of the US gets more sun than Northern Europe.
Compare that with a panel’s working life. Panels typically carry 25-year warranties and often keep producing for 30 years or more, so a panel produces many times the energy used to make it.
When did solar “break even” as an industry?
A 2013 study by Michael Dale and Sally Benson of Stanford, published in Environmental Science & Technology, looked at the global solar industry as a whole. Because the industry was growing so fast, the energy used to build new panels each year was large compared with what existing panels produced. They estimated the industry became a net producer of electricity around 2010 or shortly after. Since then, panels have become more efficient and manufacturing less energy-intensive, so the balance has only improved.
Why the old claim was ever made
Early solar panels were far less efficient and were made in small batches with energy-hungry processes. In the 1970s and 1980s, energy payback times were much longer, and some early estimates did suggest panels might barely break even. Those numbers stuck around long after the technology moved on.
What about carbon emissions?
Energy payback and carbon footprint are related but different. Most panels are made in China, where a lot of electricity still comes from coal, so manufacturing does have a carbon cost. Over a full lifetime, though, solar’s emissions are small. The IPCC’s median estimates are about 41 grams of CO2 per kWh for rooftop solar, compared with about 490 for natural gas and 820 for coal. See the environmental benefits of solar energy.
Solar panels don’t use energy to run
Another version of the myth says panels consume power while they work. They don’t. Once installed, a panel produces electricity from sunlight with no fuel and no moving parts. The only energy costs after installation are small ones, like the inverter’s own consumption and occasional maintenance.
The bottom line
A modern solar panel pays back the energy used to make it in about a year and then keeps producing for decades. The claim that panels never recover their manufacturing energy is outdated. For how long panels last, see how long solar panels last, and for whether solar counts as renewable, see is solar energy renewable.
Where does the statement “solar panels are scheduled to last 20 to 25 years” come from? Is that a general statement or is there a source for that information?
I ask because I have read of panels made in the late 1970’s (i.e., with ancient solar technology) that were operating at over 90% output in 2010. Hopefully, the newer panels will perform even better. Furthermore, good panels have warranties of 25 years – and warranties are usually somewhat conservative – so that the manufacturer is not on the hook to pay out claims.
Perhaps when you wrote that panels are “scheduled’ to last 20-25 years, you were referring to their warranties….which seems like a strange way to word it.
Please clarify. Thank you!
Everyone uses the 20-25 year lifespan as that is the effective warranty for most panels. Most manufacturers also guarantee that at 20 years a panel will produce 80% of its stated power. Considering the manufacturer will have allowed for margin of error etc. and that a panel has no moving wearable parts, to hear panels produced in the 1970s still at 90% capacity is completely viable. In my humble opinion the only thing that will really wear out a panel is UV degradation, and the materials used to make a panel are fairly resistant to that, and damage from debris such as hail. As newer panels with better manufacturing processes head over the 20 year mark I can see warranties extending. Then again most manufacturers will want you to keep buying new products, so maybe not, but that’s just the cynic in me!
Good summary & thanks! The other cost that is not mentioned is cost of waste produced in the manufacture of the solar panels. We hear about mines making big $ for 20-50 yrs, then they go bankrupt & the waste mine trailings sit on the surface & pollute the ground water etc. That’s no cost? Who pays for the massive clean up & damaged local ecosystem? We don’t we just say yuck it’s an eyesore. Look at Love Canal. Stay away…. the chemical waste byproducts are burnt into thin air? Or shall we dump them in the ocean? So what is the true overall cost? And what about the useless spent batteries do they have polluted water that gets poured down the drain? The overall environmental costs, when considered are massive & I have seen them costed.
Has anyone included the energy to produce the storage batteries? And replacing them at least every few years? Then there is the problem with recycling the used solar panel when I isn’t producing enough. I’m a retired analyst, and look at the “Total System”. NOT, just the solar panel.
So how about starting with mining the materials thru recycling the panel after 20 years?
Good point. I believe Tesla’s battery cells require about 100 watt hours to make a single watt hour of capacity. Being that they’ll last for thousands of cycles, it’s actually self sustainable. If the overall EROEI wasn’t like greater than 5 or so, it seems we’d have to use nuclear to make solar and battery, instead of remaining fossil fuels.
how will the future disposal costs factor into the net energy gain?
1. For the energy produced how long would it likely take to pay for a panel?
2. What is the estimated cost of disposing of a worn out panel?
3. What are the environmental costs of manufacturing the solar cells in the panels?
4. What are the costs for the needed battery storage? see other posts
Based on the lack of responses to the more critical questions presented here, it looks like this is a comment forum only to present the more positive view of solar panels. AT this point, the benefit to fight climate change is the stronger incentive than economic, for solar panels.
Strictly speaking, this isn’t true. Law of conservation of mass and energy. You DO need energy to produce energy. The SUN is an energy producer and light from the sun is required for solar panels to produce an output.
Also, production of storage batteries, inverter systems and copper wire used to tie it all together weren’t taken into account.
quote:
In reality, solar panels are capable of generating energy without using any energy. That’s why solar panels are attractive for people who live “off the grid”. They can hook up a solar panel, then start producing energy exclusively from the sunlight that hits their home.
Solar panels don’t require any energy to produce energy. After the “payback” phase is over, the solar panel produces energy without consuming energy. In other words, after 1 to 4 years, your solar panel has a purely net positive impact on the environment.
If solar panels produce more energy than they produce, why aren’t they setup to produce the power to manufacture more of them instead of “outside” power?
We don’t have the infrastructure yet, but it’s on it’s way, wind and solar are most likely going to be industry energy sources.
I think we’re still long way from having the equipment and infrastructure to do that. Think electric powered heavy mining equipment, cargo ships, etc. large trucks should be a reality soon, but I gather there are a lot if challenges with arrays big enough to run a factory. It does seem like today’s solar may be more like a bandaid than a cure. Perhaps it can get us by until we come up with something exponentially better- orbital panels will wireless energy transfer, cold fusion, or ?? But I’m afraid we really have to learn to use less, or be forced to.
That would be a great milestone for solar panels: a manufacturer of solar cells and solar panels, that uses only solar power.
Does this include the Aluminium frames wire and all other componentry including wire termination equipment inverters etc, not just the cell production???
From studies I was very peripherally involved in many years ago for the British Government where we were asked to do energy accounting for large scale solar energy farms, it was found that the energy inputs into solar energy exceeded the outputs because of the major energy inputs involved in connecting the outputs of electricity to the National Grid. Has this factor been addressed recently, as energy accounting is incomplete if this factor is not taken into account.
Hi, I’m leaning towards getting some panels installed and the question I have is.Does the environmental impact of a panel include disposal of the panel?
I’ve heard they extremely difficult to recycle.
The article fails to include consideration of resources needed for disposal, batteries or backup systems, infrastructure/installation.
Analysis I’ve seen that conclude that the net benefit is not near so great (or even upside down) include this. the ones that claim it is upside down I think count all the energy costs for having to put/have in place backup systems or infrastructure. (I’m not sure that is fully justified either and maybe at least some should be count as sunk energy cost)
I’m sure there is room for debate about what to include or not include.
But I think this article is overoptimistic. perhaps intentionaly
The “energy neutral” time should be advertised on every panel sold. It is a key matrix if carbon neutrality is the reason you are installing them.
The paper does not take into consideration of 48kw of electricity per week per employee for their daily commute with an electric vehicle and the energy consumption of mining raw ore and transportation.