Solar panel recycling facility planned for Georgia
SOLARCYCLE announced plans for a 5 GW solar panel recycling facility in Cedartown, Georgia, that will initially recycle 2 million solar panels per year and scale as the demand for end-of-life solar services and domestic solar supply grows.
How much scale? The company claims the 255,000 square foot facility has the capacity to recycle and recover materials from 10 million solar panels per year, “enough to process 40% of the U.S.’s retired solar panels by 2030.”
“By scaling recycling and solar glass manufacturing through a vertically integrated process, we are filling a critical gap in America’s solar supply chain and closing the loop for domestic solar manufacturing,” said Suvi Sharma, CEO and Co-Founder of SOLARCYCLE.
The new recycling facility is move-in-ready and will be operational mid 2025. SOLARCYCLE currently operates facilities in Odessa, Texas, and Mesa, Arizona.
In addition to the facility news, Microsoft also came onboard as a strategic investor in SOLARCYCLE, a roster that now includes Fifth Wall, HG Ventures, Prologis Ventures, Closed Loop Partners, and Urban Innovation Fund.
SOLARCYCLE’s growing Georgia campus
Georgia makes sense for the location, which is building out quite a bit of solar manufacturing, and is also home to SOLARCYCLE’s solar glass factory, announced in February. It is the first in the U.S. to produce specialized glass for crystalline-silicon (c-Si) photovoltaics and will have the capacity to manufacture 5-6 GW of solar glass every year.
“As Georgia continues to lead the nation in attracting jobs from emerging industries, we’re thankful SOLARCYCLE is moving up creation of these opportunities in northwest Georgia, benefitting that entire region’s economy,” said Governor Brian Kemp. “I want to thank our local and state partners who made this accelerated growth in Polk County possible, and I look forward to its impact in the years to come.”
The glass factory will be adjacent to this facility. SOLARCYCLE expects to employ more than 1,250 full-time employees across both locations once the campus reaches full capacity.
The company has long-term partnerships with more than 70 of the nation’s largest energy companies to recycle and recover value from retired solar panels.
Next gen solar panel recycling
The facility will debut SOLARCYCLE’s next generation recycling process which will have the capacity to recover up to 99% of PV materials and is optimized for bifacial C-Si panels.
SOLARCYCLE believes this closed loop process is significantly more flexible and scalable than previous recycling solutions and can achieve much higher value and mass recovery rates.
Recovered materials from this recycling facility will be manufactured into new solar glass at the adjacent factory and sold directly back to American solar manufacturers to fill a critical gap in the country’s solar supply chain.
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