
Europe's first solar panel recycling plant opens in France - DoreenMichele
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-solar-recycling/europes-first-solar-panel-recycling-plant-opens-in-france-idUSKBN1JL28Z
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walrus01
It's worth nothing that the economics of the labor to remove "old" solar
panels, transport them, recycle them, and install new panels may not make
sense. Current technology monocrystalline silicon stuff can be guaranteed to
have 80% of its original STC (standard test condition) power output after 25
years. Usually at which time the panels will be long since paid off and
whatever power they are making for the roof owner is free money.

80% of original test-conditions rated power is still a lot - if you were to
theoretically install a 40kW rated array composed of about 112, 360W panels,
that would still be a 32kW array after 25 years.

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AstralStorm
Which means the old panels should be reused instead of recycling. Perhaps
that's the point. Clean the protective layers and resell on used market.

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mchannon
Having been in possession of more than my share of "used" panels, there are a
few practicalities you need to be aware of:

•Used solar panels are off-spec and can't be teamed with other used solar
panels properly. They become like two drunks trying to help each other down
the street.

•Even used solar panels need mounting/racking hardware.

•Even used solar panels need inverters and wiring (frequently in values that
are out of production).

•Used solar panels are a b*@#% to ship.

The glass, if intact, is the most valuable part of the solar panel for
recycling purposes. This is followed closely by the aluminum frame.

The EVA (clear rubber) that encases the solar panels is garbage by the time
the panel gets recycled. This is the part that turns brown and lets in
moisture. I imagine incineration is the best path forward for this stuff,
because after 30 years of cross-linking in the sun, it's not going to melt
into a liquid.

The solar cells themselves are so enmeshed with the EVA that they turn into
inchlong irregular shards attached to tabbing. There's no realistic hope for
getting a commercial-grade panel out of them, even if you melt them down.

The tabbing is a valuable mix of tin, copper, and silver, as is the
metallization on some cells, though you'd have to be talking tons of crushed
cells to get a pound each of the metals. This should be a straightforward
matter of crush and dissolve in chemicals, then throwing the stripped silicon
into a smelter somewhere.

The "J-box" doesn't count for a lot of weight and is probably too old-
fashioned to reuse, even if the plastic hadn't broken down and the contacts
hadn't corroded. Best off cooking off the plastic and remelting the copper/tin
metal portions.

You might find yourself in a position to say, hey, I'd gladly accept a used 3
ft x 5 ft solar panel that worked 50% as good as new, and was ugly. I doubt
you would be in the position to take on 100 more, especially not being able to
team them together.

It's not unusual to see brand-spanking-new panels at prices near $0.50/W.
Shipping is starting to dominate the cost of panels, used or new.

~~~
walrus01
You certainly wouldn't want to mix and match used solar panels with an
existing install. It would be necessary to keep them together in series and
parallel configurations somewhat similar to how they were originally
installed. Or to break them up into smaller groups of the same consistent age
and resell them to offgrid builders (eg: a guy who wants 8 x 60-cell panels
for his off grid cabin somewhere).

And yes shipping will be truly a pain in the ass. A brand new pallet of 20 or
22 panels with the special plastic protectors in place, and wrapped up with
plastic, is easy to ship. Individual loose panels are difficult to transport
loose without damaging them, and labor intensive to move around.

One of the things you can do with used panels is re-use them for off grid
applications. There are off grid PV charge controllers now (Schneider, others)
which support up to either 600V or 1000VDC on the PV input side, and up to
4800W of panels per charge controller. You can build strings that are
basically all of the panels in series together, simplifying the wiring,
assuming that the panels are new enough to be also rated for 600V (US) or
1000V (EU) spec, mostly intended for feeding big inverters.

I wouldn't really say that shipping dominates the cost just yet. I recently
bought a pallet load of high-efficiency monocrystalline panels (72-cell, 360W)
at around $0.62/watt. The shipping for the pallet was about $350. The panels
themselves were about $4500 FOB.

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the-pigeon
This seems odd to me. Solar panels should last at least 30 years but we've
been finding most just keep working, potentially for decades longer.

While the power they produce degrades with time, it's not enough to be worth
junking the panel.

Basically no solar panels should be recycled unless they are completely non-
functional or faulty.

My guess is this plant will be dealing almost entirely with damaged panels and
not end of life panels. Or they hope to trick people into recycling perfectly
good but old panels, which is not eco-friendly at all.

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planteen
> This seems odd to me. Solar panels should last at least 30 years but we've
> been finding most just keep working, potentially for decades longer.

What installations do we have data on that have been running since 1970 or so?
You say they should last at least 30 years but may keep working decades
longer.

> While the power they produce degrades with time, it's not enough to be worth
> junking the panel.

It's not surprising to me that they will fail, even before 30 years. I mean,
they are outside, subjected to weather and thermal cycling. They are going to
get hit by lightning, hail, and lots of freeze/thaw cycles. Almost everything
degrades in that environment. Even the panel support structures themselves
will get crooked on that time scale from soil moisture changes.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Soil moisture changes? Most panels are mounted on metal rails on roofs,
presumably the structure isn't shifting so much that the roof's geometry is
changing. Otherwise, yes, obviously exposure to the elements is hard on
everything, though humans successfully maintain structures that are hundreds
of years old.

~~~
planteen
I was talking about solar farms. I've started to see a few of them scattered
around Colorado. The structure looks like something dug with a fence post hole
digger. Old fences definitely show their age around here (as in they are
crooked) due to expansive soils. Or maybe its mostly due to freeze/thaw in the
ground.

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timmy-turner
I wonder which technology they are using to remove the silicon and metal films
from the glass. Two guys that used to work in the same shared office space had
developed a process to do exactly that. They stumbled opon it while
experimenting with extremely bright and powerfull UV flash lights (couple of
kilowatts for the fraction of a second). These powerful UV-bursts then remove
films from surfaces due to the tensions introduced by the sudden heating.
Building the first prototype in one of the guys basement involved some insane
EE-hacking on their part such as manufacturing flash tubes to their own specs
and building high voltage transformers to drive the flash tubes.

Last info I had was that they got founded and are trying to scale their
process, opening a small experimental plant.

The only alternative to their technology that I know of is either throwing
away the glass or melting everything and then recoup all elements. The former
produces lots of waste and the latter needs huge amounts of energy.

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polskibus
Does anyone know what is the way to deal with dust and bird poo? I can imagine
that the panels get dirty over the years which reduces their efficiency more
than standard wear (less sunlight reaching the important layers). Is that
accounted for in the numbers? Is there a study that provides insight on the
maintenance required to run PV plant over 30yrs?

~~~
ISL
Soap and water?

~~~
NegativeLatency
Water and a soft brush on a stick would probably work

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dd36
I am pretty sure these guys resell used panels in bulk. Not sure where they
get them. [http://sunelec.com/home/](http://sunelec.com/home/)

