Solar panels are an effective way to generate power without polluting the atmosphere, and many people are adopting them worldwide. This helps with the fight against climate change, but it also inevitably means dealing with panels that reach the end of their lifecycle. It’s important to recycle any components or materials out of them that can be reused or repurposed, and proper disposal of everything else has to be handled right to avoid being wasteful. Numerous challenges happen due to this, and you should know what they are if you are currently responsible for solar panels or are interested in using them in the future.
How Long Should Solar Panels Last?
Many fans of solar technology love to think that it provides access to free, unlimited energy. While it’s true that the sun shines down on the planet all day, every day, it’s also true that solar panels don’t last forever. In fact, they start losing efficiency as soon as they are installed. Most residential solar panels should be operational for 25 years before the performance degradation is noticeable. However, solar panels will eventually reach an end-of-life point where they need to be disposed of or replaced. Simply throwing them in the trash is never a good idea.
Why Is Recycling Solar Panels Hard To Do?
Many solar panels assume that recycling them is hard to do because the materials that they’re made out of are themselves difficult to recycle. That’s actually rarely the case, as many of the individual materials themselves can find new use. However, it’s how many solar panels are constructed as one complete product. The process involved with separating the materials so they can be uniquely recycled is as costly as it is complicated.
Recycling solar panel modules can cost anywhere from $15 up to $45 for each unit. On the other hand, the costs of sending the same units to landfills run from $1 to just $5 per module. Given the obvious discrepancy in costs, quite a few photovoltaic panels go to landfills instead of recycling centers that can process them. Unfortunately, disposing of solar panels by using landfills has two drawbacks.
First, heavy metals that are in solar panels can wind up contaminating both soil and water. Cadmium and lead are common in many solar panels. While recycling could salvage up to 80% of most solar panels, 90% of all panels wind up in landfills. The heavy metals within eventually get into the soil and contaminate it, poisoning any food grown in the surrounding soil. They can also get into local water supplies to cause damage far past the actual landfill or just be spread through the local biosphere through plants and wildlife.
Second, when solar panels are sent to landfills, it can hurt the price and availability of new panels on the market. Any components, elements, or materials not recycled reduce the supplies necessary to make new panels. That inevitably increases prices when recycling solar panels can potentially harvest and repurpose rare elements. Gallium and indium are two primary examples common to many solar panels, and both of these elements are already scarce around the planet.
Lackluster Legislation
In the European Union, a regulatory framework exists that requires up to 80% of all solar panel components to be recycled. This was put in place and enforced to help the solar industry maintain access to crucial components necessary to produce clean energy on a continuing basis. However, there is no similar legislation in the United States or many other countries that are turning to solar power.
An Uninformed Public
Residents who own solar panels are usually well-versed in their benefits. However, they might know little to nothing about how to recycle their panels when the time comes properly. While recycling options are limited, they do exist. Unfortunately, many members of the public have no idea that photovoltaic panels can be recycled, much less where these options are located or which one to use for each kind of solar panel.
Transportation Troubles
California is one of the leading states in terms of promoting solar technology. However, it’s also ground zero for the problems associated with disposing of or recycling solar panels. The state is seeing a surge in residential panels hitting the end of their lifecycle due to tax benefits decades ago promoting their use. However, in the middle of 2022, only one recycling center in the state was readily available for solar panels. Given the sheer geographic size of the state, this meant that most residents were quite a distance away and would have to pay for the transportation of their panels before they could even be recycled.
Solar Panel Recycling Is Also a Growing Industry
Industry estimates suggest that the United States alone will have 1 million metric tons of photovoltaic panels disposed of every year by 2030. Fortunately, three different recycling processes are already possible to keep as much of that material in play. They include chemical recycling, mechanical recycling, and redeployment.
Chemical recycling focuses on the small silver wires that conduct electricity through solar cells inside a panel. Certain chemical processes trigger molecular reactions that separate those wires from the rest of the solar panel materials around them. This means they can be recycled, and other solar panel materials can be reused after similar chemical processes.
Mechanical recycling is a process of physically breaking down solar modules into distinct components, such as wiring, glass, and metals. A common technique is removing aluminum framing before grinding wiring, silicon, and glass into a glass cullet, which can be used as a building material. This process is an effective answer to avoiding solar waste, but it doesn’t break down components as much as other options. Also, the resulting materials aren’t always reusable within the solar industry.
Redeployment is usually the first option whenever possible. Many modules hit the end of their warranty but are still effective at producing energy. They might be ideal for smaller installations than they first saw where not as much energy is necessary. Rather than power a business, home, or industry, their new applications could include limited uses off the grid, lighting up electronic signs, or charging e-bikes.
Future Benefits
Recycling solar panels instead of throwing them away can have many potential benefits. Growth in green job positions is bound to happen. However, the solar panel industry can also potentially recover $12 billion in material value in the next two decades. That could amount to 2 billion panels made without extracting new materials from the Earth and producing over 630 GW of power from materials already in use.
Key Takeaways
At a global level, sources of renewable energy, including solar, are starting to outpace the use of coal. While this might be good news in the long-term fight against climate change, solar panels do have to be replaced. The costs of using landfills compared to recycling constrict the reuse of crucial materials and rare elements. Public education and ease of recycling access are other pain points across the industry. Fortunately, options do exist and are slowly growing.
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