Utility giant Engie North America has incorporated what it calls a “precycling provision” to incorporate solar panel and project component recycling into power purchase agreements (PPA) at four solar PV plants across the Midwest, US.
This new approach has been developed in partnership with PV recycling firm Solarcycle and will cover nearly one million solar panels from a combined 375MW of solar PV projects to be recycled when they reach their end of life.
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According to the companies, all the solar panels and system components from the four projects will include full traceability “to ensure circularity goals are met and ultimately returned into the domestic supply chain.”
“Engie’s precycling provision sets a new precedent for the utility-scale solar industry by proving that circular economy principles can be achieved without complex regulatory intervention and in a way that doesn’t require an up-front payment,” said Jesse Simons, co-founder and chief commercial officer at Solarcycle.
The four solar PV projects involved in the partnership are expected to be completed in the next two years.
Solar recycling interest growing in the US
Solarcycle continues to secure recycling agreements in the US with both upstream and downstream companies. Recently, the company signed a recycling agreement with German renewable energy company RWE Clean Energy to use its proprietary recycling system for the latter’s products.
At the upstream level, Solarcycle signed several PV recycling agreements with solar manufacturers in the US last year, including Silfab Solar, Canadian Solar, Heliene and Runergy.
On top of securing recycling partnerships with both solar manufacturers and developers, the company has been increasing its recycling manufacturing capacity with the construction of a 5GW solar panel recycling plant in the US state of Georgia.
At the time, the company said that the initial annual recycling capacity would start with two million panels per year, and would have the capacity to recycle up to ten million solar panels per year. The solar panel recycling plant will be located near its recycled solar glass manufacturing plant.
Aside from the recycling plant it is building in Georgia, Solarcycle also operates facilities in Odessa, Texas and Mesa, Arizona, where it is headquartered.
Solar manufacturer Qcells recently launched its own recycling arm, EcoRecycle, as well as a recycling manufacturing plant. Similarly to Solarcycle’s 5GW recycling solar panel plant, Qcells’ recycling plant will also be located in the state of Georgia, near its 3.3GW vertically-integrated solar PV plant in the county of Cartersville.
Once at full capacity, Qcells’ recycling plant will have an annual capacity of 250MW of solar panel recycling, which represents nearly 500,000 solar panels per year. It will be able to repurpose materials such as aluminium, glass, silver and copper.
