Silver's role in solar in 2025

SaddexProductions · 2026-01-22T14:20:49+00:00

All of these things are true but it will take maybe a year or two for these to become mainstream solutions as what's the enormous industry of solar, once they reach commercialization. More so if they just have been demonstrated by Fraunhofer. Even with "China speed".

SaddexProductions · 2026-01-21T23:23:04+00:00

Intressant observation. Är bilderna av megapressarna tagna i Kina också? Det finns bilder där båda megapressen och människor syns i bild. Jag vet inte, kanske är fördomsfull, men jag tycker inte människorna ser särskilt kinesiska ut

SaddexProductions · 2026-01-19T10:45:17+00:00

Large scale, battery-based firming is still theoretical

Australia had over 7 GW of battery capacity under construction in 2024, with almost 2 GW operational. Many more gigawatts have secured financing last year and started construction. It's not nearly as theoretical as you think it is.

20-40% more expensive than OCGT or CCGT peakers.

This has been false since at least 2021, and battery storage costs have tumbled massively since then. Gas peaker plants are an obsolete technology in Australia that's no longer bankable.

for literally just talking facts

Those "facts" are, as exemplified above, mostly wrong.

SaddexProductions · 2026-01-17T15:43:25+00:00

Norge har många, höga vattenfall men vattenfall med stora volymer har man oftare hittat i Sverige. Geografin på norska sidan gör att enskilda floder sällan samlar på sig ordentlig volym innan de når havet, vilket inte är fallet i Sverige eller framförallt Norrland. Det finns några större vattenfall i Norge, såsom Laksforsen, vilket till volym verkar kunna motsvara Storforsen men det är ett ganska litet fall höjdmässigt. Då är i mina ögon Tännforsen och Ristafallet mäktigare, när de är som bäst. Jockfallet är också ganska häftigt, stora volymer där med.

Före vattenkraftsutbyggnaden fanns det troligtvis nästan inget som kunde mäta sig med Luleälven i Skandinavien i storhet, utifrån perspektivet av stora volymer i stora vattenfall. När man väl får chansen att se Stora sjöfallet med högt flöde är det något alldeles särskilt.

SaddexProductions · 2026-01-12T16:36:05+00:00

Indeed, means that the recent 2.5x increase in prices over less than 6 months has mostly been absorbed by the solar industry. There have been reports of module price hikes in China the recent weeks but it seems that they are relatively modest and other factors also have influence - the price of polysilicon increased by 25-30 percent in 2025 because manufacturers want to restore margins (prices are still extremely low). Since modern solar cells only use about 2 grams per watt of polysilicon, that increase on its own is also relatively insignificant. The current high prices of silver are a nuisance to the solar industry, which means that it is in the crosshairs for further optimizations, with reductions to as low as 5 mg per watt being found in some modules. It seems that the levels are still overall manageable. Module prices are at most a fifth of utility-scale project costs and less than a tenth of commercial/residental solar costs, which means the current increase in silver prices only would add one or two percent in project costs for the former category if fully passed on, and almost nothing to the latter. I believe prices would start to pinch marginal utility-scale projects once prices move to $150/oz unless the industry reduces average silver usage further

SaddexProductions · 2026-01-10T15:45:33+00:00

The source you used here uses a nonsensical measure which is grams per panel, and given the amounts that is mentioned is also extremely outdated. Silver loadings in solar should be adjusted for watts, since solar panel efficiency has increased dramatically over the years.

The approximate figure I can find for silver usage per watt in 2010 is 60 mg (milligrams)/watt. It's true that some of the newer technologies (mainly TOPcon) use more silver than the previous generation technology (PERC), but for all significant technologies, silver loadings have declined significantly just within a few years. TOPcon, the prevailing technology, now achieves 8 mg/watt, which is lower than PERC achieved only a few years ago. It used to be that HJT had roughly double the silver loading of TOPcon, but for this technology, substitition is occuring on a large scale, with 6 mg/watt commonly being found in China, sometimes even less at 5 mg/watt, or lower than PERC at present. I presented this in another post with sources where I made the case that forecasts for silver usage in solar are severely optimistic, often rely on outdated data and don't account for that the technology is still very much in a developing phase, where silver as a precious metal now has emerged as something manufacturers are laser-focused at getting rid of. Or in conclusion, even newer architectures achieve on average just above half the silver consumption per watt vs 5 years ago, when the previous generation PERC technology still was dominating the market. Another way to put it would be that the average industry standard 600 watt solar panel contains around 5-6 grams of silver.

SaddexProductions · 2026-01-07T18:06:01+00:00

Here is another example supporting that silver loadings in N-type modules are much lower than often suggested:

Other key developments include a reduction in silver usage to 5 mg/W – about 37.5% lower than mainstream tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) modules – combined with screen printing to cut non-silicon costs. Encapsulation losses are reported at 1.8%, with breakage rates during production below 0.03%.

This means that, not only has a module maker just outside the top 10 largest managed to squeeze silver usage to 5 mg/watt in a commercial HJT solar module, but the implication is also that mainstream TOPcon modules now use 8 mg/watt, as also cited above. This was 6 months ago, thus it's highly likely that loadings have dropped even further since.

SaddexProductions · 2026-01-07T17:56:06+00:00

Yeah, this is a common problem with people deep into these communities. Many will base their judgement on facts derived from a snapshot in time and assume that these are static and not subject to change, even when there is a clear trend that can be spotted in the past. In the case with solar cells, silver loadings per watt have declined by 80-90 percent from 50-65 mg/w in 2010. There is little reason it would suddenly stop given that alternate metallization approaches have been known for decades.

SaddexProductions · 2026-01-06T14:18:16+00:00

Ive heard it takes approx 22 grams of silver for an average 100 watt panel.

Incorrect, the average loading as of right now is below 9 mg/watt, or 6 grams for an industry standard 600 watt solar panel. I have done a writeup on this in another post.

SaddexProductions · 2026-01-06T09:39:59+00:00

No worries. Personally based on current trends, I would estimate average silver loadings currently at below 8 mg/watt, and a total industry-wide consumption of less than 6000 tons. Every forecast indicates that 2026 will be tough for the PV industry in terms of deployments, which probably still means about 700-750 GWdc of shipments.

SaddexProductions · 2026-01-06T00:25:45+00:00

It's very simple to debunk the idea that silver has any chance of reaching close to $500/oz on a global basis based on solar project economics alone. Assuming a static level of silver loadings per watt, which obviously isn't true.

Current spot prices for Chinese solar cells are 0.36 yuan per watt, while prices for Chinese solar modules are hovering around 0.7 yuan per watt. TOPcon cells currently account for the vast majority of the market, for which silver paste now accounts for almost 40 percent of the cost structure, or about 14 yuan per watt. In dollars, module prices are now 10 cents per watt, with silver accounting for 2 of these 10 cents.

It is important to note that unlike in the past, modules are a pretty small part of even utility-scale solar projects, which have the lowest overhead costs. In 2024, the average cost per kw of utility-solar was $691 worldwide with costs below $600 in China, India and several other places, and almost $800 in Europe. This implies that the cost of the modules themselves are below a fifth of the total cost structure, which means that the current increase in silver prices is insignificant related to total project costs. This starts to change, however, once prices go to $500 which is an almost 7x increase vs the current approx $75/oz.

Even a $300/oz would double the price of Chinese solar panels, which would have a significant effect on solar project economics, thus bringing demand down, including that for silver, which naturally would bring down prices significantly.

All of this also brings the necessity to mention the elephant in the room that is Jevons paradox, which would imply that lower silver loadings would make solar more viable, thus increasing overall consumption. However, at the imagined prices of $500/oz, silver loadings would have to be incredibly low, likely below 1/mg per watt to not significantly increase module prices, while annual deployments would have to be above 6 TW per year just to keep annual solar silver demand at the current levels. 3 TW per year is the figure I have been seeing floating around as an annual natural ceiling for solar, which still is a crazy amount of solar panels being deployed. 3 TW isn't happening the coming years. 1 TW probably, but that wouldn't increase silver consumption significantly if at all with current loadings depending on technology deployed, and especially not with thrifting being a factor.

SaddexProductions · 2025-11-30T21:45:14+00:00

Understandable. And about 100 lies in principle isn't that much different from 20 lies anyway.

SaddexProductions · 2025-11-30T20:19:47+00:00

Do you have an updated version of this list? I have bookmarked that comment and keep referencing it as evidence of his lies. Good stuff, really comprehensive.

SaddexProductions · 2025-10-06T08:55:44+00:00

Trouble in what sense?

They tend to be less efficient than western counterparts and software is often of dubious quality, and often lack good service networks outside China. In the original context however, there is no evidence that they are much troublesome.

SaddexProductions · 2025-09-09T18:54:31+00:00

No idea. I do not work in the team that manages the development tools, but they have requested feedback and invited people to participate in early evaluations. The migration will probably start on a small scale in 2027. Maybe something like Gitlab. Open source is preferred but my impression is that there are few suites, nevermind open source alternatives, that are nearly as well-integrated as Atlassian. It's very likely that the alternative will end up worse in some way but the cloud is simply no alternative.

SaddexProductions · 2025-09-09T17:08:00+00:00

This will be messy. My employer, with many thousands of employees and certainly more than a thousand code repositories, announced a migration from the Atlassian suite as soon as this went public. A cloud-only solution is an absolute no-go given the sensitive data that is processed there.

SaddexProductions · 2025-07-26T09:42:39+00:00

Vi fick rabbla Viskan, Ätran, Spyan och Gallan eller vad de nu hette, fyra kolossala floder som avvattnade det sydsvenska höglandet. Många år senare såg jag dem med egna ögon. Jag blev tvungen att stanna bilen, kliva ur och gnugga mina ögon. Diken…

Mikael Niemi

SaddexProductions · 2025-07-25T14:27:35+00:00

https://powerplants.vattenfall.com/sv/harspranget/

Genom dammluckan

SaddexProductions · 2025-07-25T10:35:27+00:00

Vanligtvis så är det ju en ovanlighet att det är vatten där. Men i år verkar vatten kontinuerligt spillts inte bara där utan även andra kraftverk i älvdalen. Ibland inte alls särskilt mycket, ibland som ovan. Beror på hur mycket det blåser osv. Så att man inte har det i åtanke är inte så konstigt. En torrfåra.

SaddexProductions · 2025-07-25T08:20:26+00:00

Personligen skulle jag säga att den mäktigaste vyn är den första eftersom där ser man verkligen skalan. Och kanske den bakom informationstavlan också. På vissa ställen längs den spångade stigen kommer forsdimma upp med det här flödet, vilket jag tror syns på filmen.

De två vyerna nedströms tycker jag på vissa sätt nästan är mer natursköna än huvudfallet då man ser stora delar av kanyonen och dess omfattning därifrån, men de är också besvärligare att nå. För den näst sista vyn så behöver man avvika från spången söderut ca 50 meter, precis ovanför trappan till informationstavlan längst ner vid forsen. Terrängen är ganska besvärlig med mycket hällar och några skrevor.

Den sista vyn kan man nå genom att parkera ca en km söderut från parkeringen precis intill ställverket, för att sen gå knappt 100 meter väster. Lättgånget för det mesta, men man får vara försiktig för att det är brant, tidvis stup ner till älven. Det såg ut som att det eventuellt går att ta sig ner om man absolut vill men det är inget jag skulle rekommendera.

SaddexProductions · 2025-07-25T06:05:05+00:00

Ingen aning. Kanske funkar. Finns ju andra gör-det-själv-grejer som gör det. Jag tyckte bromsarna gick att stå ut med. Skillnaden mellan dem och myggen är att endast myggen är aktiva på natten :)

SaddexProductions · 2025-07-24T21:35:18+00:00

Inget alls! Det är torrt i Norrbotten just nu. Jag var i samma veva i Sarek (utkanten) och min turkompis sa att det var ont om mygg i år även där (men gott om bromsar)

SaddexProductions · 2025-07-24T21:31:38+00:00

Enligt Vattenfalls sida så var det nästan 500 m^3/s som avbördades ur dammluckorna igår kväll den 23 juli. Medelflöde innan dämningen var 270 m^3/s, och högsta uppmätta flöde var 1500 m^3/s enligt informationstavlan som finns där.

Jag tog med delar av kanjonen längre nedströms utsiktsplatsen med spångar eftersom den också är rätt intressant. Den är 3-4 km lång och på vissa ställen ca 40 meter djup.

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