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.
Grant funding has been awarded to a project in Australia that will explore the potential revenue streams and consumer interest in used solar PV panels.
The solar industry’s manufacturing footprint, and indeed the projects themselves, are becoming ever larger, with more panels and other associated equipment being packaged and shipped globally. Now, as Emilie Oxel O’Leary, CEO at Green Clean Solar explains, the industry is getting serious on its end of life obligations and establishing a true circular economy
