Spruiks Alloy Steel Solar Panel Frames from Risen Energy

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Leading Chinese solar panel maker Risen Energy says it is tackling the carbon footprint of aluminum module frames through the use of coated alloy steel. But it lacks a lot of details in its announcement.

Aluminum production is an energy-intensive process, with electricity making up a large portion of the energy consumed. Aluminum is sometimes referred to as “frozen electricity”.

The aluminum frame of a solar panel is around 10% of its weight – so there is a lot of ‘frozen electricity’ on rooftops and in paddocks across Australia and the world1.

The good news is that aluminum is easy to recycle and can be recycled pretty much forever without noticeable loss of quality. There is also the possibility of operating smelters using renewable energy. For example, Tomago Aluminium, Australia’s largest aluminum smelter and a huge consumer of electricity2would supposedly switch to 100% renewable energy “for all intents and purposes” by 2029.

Either way, Risen Energy has developed an alternative – a coated alloy steel solar panel frame that the company has spent a year fine-tuning to have the necessary strength, corrosion resistance and weatherability attributes. This was made possible in part by a corrosion-resistant zinc-aluminum-magnesium coating and surface treatment technology developed by Risen. The company states:

“Risen Energy’s fully upgraded Titan module series has received IEC certification from independent testing and certification organization TÜV SÜD, demonstrating that the upgraded series fully meets the needs of various system application scenarios. of photovoltaic energy production.

The general specifications of the Risen Energy Titan range are available on the SQs solar panel comparison chart. At the time of writing, there was no mention of the new frames on Risen’s spec sheets.

Alloy steel frames – missing detail

It’s unclear how much the new frame material increases a module’s weight (if at all), or whether it will be used across Risen’s entire line of solar panels.

Risen Energy indicates 13,500 kWh of thermal “power” (Risen probably means energy3) is required to produce one tonne of aluminum; equivalent to 11.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2)4 – while it takes 4,500 kWh to produce one ton of steel.

But on top of that are the emissions involved in the coating, which were not specified by Risen Energy. It is also not stated if the new material involves an additional cost (or if it makes a panel cheaper) and how it affects recycling.

While every steel is an alloy – from alloyed iron to carbon – the label “alloy steel” is applied to other added alloying elements. What they are in this case was also not mentioned.

Risen’s announcement was generally fairly sparse, as is often the case with news from solar panel manufacturers. But given that Risen Energy is a major player5other manufacturers can sit down and take notice of what the company is up to.

Risen Energy Solar Panels have been quite popular in Australia and although the company has been a SolarQuotes recommended brand in the past it is not currently listed due to customer service/warranty issues.

While we were talking about alternative materials for solar panel frames, we recently reported that South Korea’s LG Chem has developed a plastic solar frame – but if this will be used on LG solar panels that remains to be seen.

Footnotes

  1. No, this does not mean that the amount of energy used to make a solar panel is more than it produces over its lifetime. But the Myth of solar energy harvesting still stubbornly refuses to die.
  2. Tomago Aluminum goes wild 10% of NSW electricity supply and has a demand of around 850 MW on a fairly constant basis.
  3. A kW is a measure of power, a kWh of energy – power and energy are different beasts.
  4. It may be higher or lower depending on the power generation source.
  5. Module production capacity of 19.1 GW according to the company.

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