I was thinking more about the batteries part if people are aiming for grid scale storage.

Sodium ion batteries do not require rare earths. Rare earths are not a limiter to scaling up PV and battery storage deployment. All necessary inputs are abundant and geographically diverse. Minerals and energy goes in, out comes clean energy infra.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/11/28/are-rare-earths-used-...

https://electrek.co/2024/05/17/china-first-large-scale-sodiu...

> Sodium ion batteries

That’s prospective technology developed literally in order to overcome the limitation that is lithium availability… The battery you are talking about in China is both the first and very small capacity related to the grid.

I’m sorry but I think you clearly have an axe to grind and are not engaging with me with full intellectual honesty here.

I’ve provided facts. If you are unhappy with those facts, that is a choice, but the facts are still facts. Lithium is also abundant; I mentioned sodium because it is even more abundant and the evidence shows China’s pilot with the technology to be successful, but using lithium for utility scale storage is also feasible based on reserves available [1] and cost [2] if sodium ion utility scale storage is unable to scale, for whatever reason. Neither chemistry requires rare earths.

[1] https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/lithium-electric-v...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-07-09/china-... | https://archive.today/DklaA

Additional citation:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41292113 ("HN: North Carolina is getting a $1.4B sodium-ion battery gigafactory")

https://electrek.co/2024/08/16/north-carolina-sodium-ion-bat... ("electrek: North Carolina is getting a $1.4B sodium-ion battery gigafactory")

Most house batteries use LFP. They do not contain rare earths. I've never checked, but I presume that's true for grid scale batteries too as the cost per kWh stored is roughly the same LCM, but LFP last for an order of magnitude more cycles (and weigh more, which isn't a concern for grid storage).

Batteries don't use rare earths either. Rare earths are used in magnets, which are used in most motors and generators.

Solar panels don't exist in isolation;

    Rare earth elements (REEs) and rare metals are key ingredients for glass, lights, magnets, batteries, and catalytic converters, and used in everything from cell phones to cars. For example, to make the magnet for one wind turbine, you need about 300 kilograms of neodymium.

Rare earth production is a limiting factor for general electronics, magnets and batteries.

Pretty sure your source is shit given that the first element they list is glass which just boron and silicon.

You might want to talk to material engineers about the vast spectrum of types of glass in use today.

There's more to glass than borosilicates and bulk ingredients are the least interesting source of unique properties.

FWiW Soda-Lime glass is more common than borosilicate glass and bases in at ~ 70 percent silica (silicon dioxide), 15 percent soda (sodium oxide), and 9 percent lime (calcium oxide). No Boron (in general).

That dull fact alone suggests your knowledge of glass could use a significant leg up.

If you're looking to better educate yourself there's the Corning School of Glass for the Art Glass applications and various industrial glass journals about optical glass, strengthened glass, et al.

As for rare earths in glass you can either take the material science journal search approach (multiple hits) or refer to the uses page of the largest global supplier of rare earths:

    Rare earths react with other metallic and non-metallic elements to form compounds each of which has specific chemical behaviours. This makes them indispensable and non-replaceable in many electrical, optical, magnetic, and catalytic applications.

~ https://lynasrareearths.com/about-us/what-are-rare-earths/

See the part "non-replaceable in many .. optical .. applications" ?

optical here means microscopes/glasses and the like where you need very fine IOR control, not a flat piece of glass on top of a solar pannel.

Who said anything about rare earths being used in solar panel glass?

I stated as a fact that rare earths had an application in glass technology.

You're the one that seemed to think the only type of glass was borosilicate, in addition to utterly blanking on the importance of trace elements and doping in glass properties.

As mentioned, you might benefit from a better reading in materials science.

For example, not just microscopes, there's also: https://www.fiberoptics4sale.com/blogs/archive-posts/9504429...

I heard a rumour that these "optical fibres" get used a lot, but hey, you're the expert.

Comparinging by volume produced/consumed, I think it's reasonable to pretty much ignore all non-borosilicate glass for the purpose of this discussion.

And the snark doesn't add to the discussion.

> Comparinging by volume produced/consumed, I think it's reasonable to pretty much ignore all non-borosilicate glass

     Soda–lime glass accounts for about 90% of manufactured glass.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soda%E2%80%93lime_glass

The implication being that borosilicate glass accounts for at most 10% of global production.

It's the dominant type for thermal | bakeware where expansion factors matter, but overall not the most common glass type in production.

> And the snark doesn't add to the discussion.

Please advise the user that stated "Pretty sure your source is shit given .. {false statement}"

Apologies for getting my facts wrong. You are of course correct.

Re: snark - the point of HN is that we are better than that. If someone is snarky, then we shouldn't respond in kind. But I get it. It's easier to say than to do.

Consider this, I've responded to an ill considered disrespectful one liner with a wealth of information about glass.

At no point did I claim that rare earth in glass was a bottleneck to solar panel manufacture, glass only arose as doping glass for specific properties is one of the many reasons why we process rare earth materials at all.