SolarCycle today announced details of the solar panel recycling facility that will be built adjacent to its glass manufacturing plant in Cedartown, Georgia. The 255,000-ft2 recycling facility will have the capacity to recycle 10 million solar panels each year — nearly 5 GW total. It will initially recycle 2 million solar panels per year and scale as the company meets growing market demand for end-of-life solar services and domestic solar supply.
SolarCycle will employ more than 1,250 workers across the recycling facility and glass manufacturing outfit once both locations reach full capacity.
“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.
“We are pleased to accelerate our work in Cedartown, Georgia, in response to continued demand for solar recycling. 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.
To support the acceleration and expansion of the SolarCycle circular economy campus in Cedartown, the company welcomes Microsoft to its roster of strategic investors, which includes Fifth Wall, HG Ventures, Prologis Ventures, Closed Loop Partners and Urban Innovation Fund.
The Georgia 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 silicon panels. 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.
The Cedartown facility joins SolarCycle’s other recycling outfits in Texas and Arizona. The Georgia plant should become operational in mid-2025. The glass factory should begin production in 2026.
It is nice to see some articles about “Proactive” industry development instead of “Reactive” industry development. The circular and sustainable recycling economy being developed now will have the opportunity to grow with the demand for recycling, recovery and reuse of materials for a sustainable supply chain with a lower carbon footprint than the original solar PV panels manufactured 10 to 20 years ago.
A company like First Solar that doesn’t use crystalline but CdTe thin film cells and has committed themselves to power their manufacturing lines by 2028 using solar PV to manufacture solar PV is as close to zero carbon footprint as one can get. Getting First Solar’s recycling program powered by the ‘sun’ would complete the circle, as close to perpetual energy as one can get.