end of life

US solar manufacturer Silfab Solar has signed a supply deal for US-made solar glass with PV recycling firm, Solarcycle.

Korean-owned solar manufacturer Qcells has signed an agreement with Texas-based solar module recycling firm Solarcycle to recycle Qcells’ decommissioned modules in the US.

EDF North America has signed an agreement with Solarcycle to recycle all damaged or broken solar modules from its solar installations.

As solar power projects mature, panels increasingly lose efficiency. What do operators do with solar panels once they have reached the end of their lifespan? Will Norman finds out.

PV Tech Premium sat down with Singapore-headquartered solar manufacturer Maxeon to discuss its practices for ensuring a more recyclable and sustainable future for solar modules.

Part-2 of this article will discuss how recycling solar PV will reach landfill parity, the company’s global ambition and how PV recycling will have to work towards avoiding dumping panels illegally in less developed countries.

PV Tech Premium talks to Solarcycle’s co-founders about their company’s unique ability to extract every single constituent material out of an end-of-life PV module, how solar panels are not lasting as long as people expected, the race to prevent solar waste being illegally dumped across the globe, and how modules can have a useful second life.

AES Corporation has signed a Recycling Services Agreement with US solar recycling company Solarcycle, which will see modules from AES’ projects sent to Solarcycle’s Texas facility to be recycled and repurposed.

As the PV industry reckons with its social and environmental impact and the byproducts of its processes, beyond the near-term questions over provenance and manufacturing ethics, concerns at the horizon of a module’s lifespan are coming more and more into focus.  

The state government of Queensland has issued a draft proposal to ban the dumping of solar modules in landfill, instead encouraging a recycling programme to repurpose the materials.