circular economy

A team of researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has proposed a cost-effective way to recycle silicon solar panels. Their process consists of module deframing, laminate shredding and material concentration using electrostatic separation, reducing their original weight by 2% to 3%.

With Australia’s appetite for solar energy fuelling a projected surge in end-of-life solar panels, the Victorian government has launched a $10 million program to help deal with the more than 180,000 tonnes of PV panels expected to enter the state’s waste stream by 2035.

Researchers in the United Kingdom have developed a new method of extracting silver and aluminium from end-of-life PV cells using iron chloride and aluminium chloride dissolved in brines. According to the research team, the cheap solvents retrieve up to 95% of the metals within 10 minutes, achieving a 98% purity of silver chloride.

Solar manufacturer Maxeon Solar Technologies has teamed with Adelaide-headquartered solar panel collection and recycling company Reclaim PV Recycling to recover and recycle SunPower branded solar panels in Australia.

A report from Australia’s Future Battery Industries Cooperative Research Centre which analysed the development of battery hubs in the U.S., Germany and Japan, has found that co-location and cooperation between industry and government were key to hub success. For Australia to play the same game, it will have to leverage its wealth of resources, and clean up its act along the way.

Reclaim PV is a step closer to ensuring solar generation lives up to the promise of providing clean energy throughout its lifecycle, and that repurposing of its component materials becomes viable.

In February, non-profit EU solar panel recycling body PV Cycle announced it had collected 5,000 tons of modules in France, of which 94.7% could be recycled. A reader asked us about the remaining 5.3% and here, PV Cycle’s communications manager, Bertrand Lempkowicz, responds.

As the world strives to arrest the climate crisis and increases its investment in solar energy, the industry must address its own sustainability. A new report produced by Arup in Australia looks at how to apply principles of the circular economy to current and future PV waste management.

Credibility comes not just from offering products that generate clean electricity, but also from the way in which those products are manufactured, says SMA Solar Technology CEO Jürgen Reinert. Here, transparency and sustainability are key. That’s why one of the world’s largest PV inverter producers has partnered with pv magazine’s UP sustainability initiative. In the following Q&A, Reinert lays out what SMA is doing to step UP its green game.

As Australians seek to control rising energy costs and tackle the damaging impacts of climate change, rooftop solar has boomed. To manage the variability of rooftop solar – broadly, the “no power at night” problem – we will also see a rapid increase in battery storage.