Mineral exploration company Comstock Metals has secured a lease to build a solar module recycling facility in Nevada, US.
Located at Silver Springs, Nevada, the facility can process up to 100,000 tonnes of decommissioned solar PV modules per year, according to Comstock Metals. Recently, the company received unanimous approval for a conditional use permit from the board of county commissioners of Lyon County, Nevada, for the operations, and material storage of solar modules at the facility.
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The company claimed that the new facility could deliver “a 100% closed-loop, zero-landfill solution”, reducing electronic waste sent to landfills and increasing the recovery of valuable materials.
Moreover, the new facility aims to cater to the needs of the rapidly expanding solar industry in the Western US.
PV Tech Premium recently examined the decommissioning of solar modules. Currently, there are limited studies on the processes of retiring solar projects, and cost estimates vary wildly. However, according to the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), 29 states in the US have policies applicable to decommissioning PV systems.
Additionally, a standard power purchase agreement (PPA) for a solar energy project lasts 25 years, and the industry is still relatively young, so there have been very few cases of decommissioning to date from which to learn best practices. Meanwhile in the US, solar projects, of which 80% were installed within the last seven years, are far younger than the older plants in Europe, so attention is only beginning to shift towards decommissioning.
Aside from the new recycling plant built by Comstock Metals, US-based PV recycling firm Solarcycle announced plans to build a recycled solar glass manufacturing facility in Polk County, Georgia earlier this year.
The facility will use recycled materials from retired solar panels to make new solar glass, which Solarcycle said was a “first-of-its-kind” endeavour in the US. This would make Solarcycle one of the first producers of solar glass for crystalline silicon PV in the US.
In Europe, the European Council confirmed that solar module manufacturers would need to bear responsibility for the waste disposal and recycling of modules. Under an amendment to its Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, the Council said that the cost for the recycling and disposal of solar modules placed on the market after 13 August 2012 rests with the producers of the products.
