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Very roughly the cost to make the panel is somewhat in proportion to the energy required to make them. In other words, if the payback period is 5 years, I assume it takes about that much energy (5 years of solar production) to recoup the energy required to produce them, factoring in all the inverters, equipment needed to install the panels, including the energy required to make the vehicles of the workers that drove to install everything.
The energy required to make the panels themselves also needs to factor in the mining equipment that obtained the raw materials, and all of the energy along the way to get to a final product.
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