US solar PV recycling firm, Solarcycle, has produced a pilot module using 50% recycled glass from other decommissioned panels, which it says matches the performance of entirely new products.
The company said that the “mini module”, developed in partnership with Arizona State University’s (ASU) Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, marks “a critical step toward a closed-loop solar manufacturing process.”
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In tests conducted by ASU researcher Kate Fisher, the 50% recycled module, which uses recycled glass cullet from panels processed with Solarcycle’s technology, was compared with a baseline module using entirely new glass. The researchers found that the 50-50 recycled modules performed as well as the panels made with virgin glass, “with no statistically significant differences across any key metrics.”
Zachary Holman, vice dean for research and innovation, said the results “proved that you don’t have to sacrifice performance to build solar panels more sustainably. It’s not just a lab success—it’s a path forward for the industry.”
Pablo Dias, CTO and co-founder at Solarcycle, said: “By proving we can manufacture new solar panels using recycled materials that produce at peak performance levels, we’re taking a major step toward making the solar industry more sustainable, scalable, and self-reliant.”
Solarcycle is building a solar recycling plant and a solar glass production plant in Cedartown, Georgia. Once it is fully operational, the 5GW recycling hub is expected to recycle material from ten million solar modules per year, which the company said was expected in mid-2025. The solar glass production plant would use waste glass (glass cullet) from the recycling centre to produce new solar glass, a first for the industry.
Solarcycle also operates recycling facilities in Texas and Arizona, and has inked module recycling deals with a number of major US industry players, including Georgia-based Qcells. Since then, Qcells has announced a new PV recycling business, EcoRecycle, which will operate a 250MW recycling plant near its manufacturing hub in Cartersville, Georgia.
Material recovery firm OnePlanet is also planning a US solar recycling operation. Earlier this year it secured US$21 million in two financing deals to establish a recycling centre in Green Cove Springs, Florida. At the time, OnePlanet CEO, André Pujadas, said “Solar as an industry is now at an inflection point in its lifecycle, where we can’t simply install megawatts—we must also build the industrial capacity to recover and reintegrate the very materials that enable it.”
PV Tech Premium has previously covered solar recycling extensively. You can read some of that coverage here.
