Solar recycling machine powers up as key export market closes to used Australian panels

Queensland’s first machine that can extract nearly 100 per cent of materials from discarded solar panels has come online, just as a key market for secondhand panel reuse collapses.

Pan Pacific unveiled its recycling technology in the Sunshine State on Monday with the launch of its first production line that can recover up to 99 per cent of the materials used in a panel, from silver through to silicon and glass.  

The company is planning a second line at its Brisbane factory and an expansion into north Queensland – but it needs end-of-life solar panels. The one line can handle about 20,000 panels a month.

That feedstock is readily available, albeit still difficult to coordinate as the supply chains to get decommissioned solar panels to recyclers are still in their infancy.

Still, it’s a space that recyclers are keen to fill as the Queensland Solar Stewardship Scheme, led by the Smart Energy Council (SEC), moves forward. 

Despite an attempt three years ago by the SEC to lobby for a national version, the Queensland scheme is the first coordinated attempt in Australia to build an end-to-end solar panel recycling industry, from collecting decommissioned panels to recycling to finding offtakers for the materials. 

The Queensland government tipped more than $5 million into the pilot in April, which promised to recycle 30,000 panels and figure out details such as how to incentivise solar installers to take responsibility for old panels rather than leaving them with residents to sort out.

Keen to get moving

An acceleration of efforts to reclaim valuable materials in end-of-life solar panels coming off rooftops and from solar farms comes as key export markets for second-hand Australian panels start to dry up.

Over the last four weeks, African offtakers have closed their doors to the higher-priced second-hand solar panels sent from Australia, says SEC stewardship program manager Robyn Cowie.

China’s stunning surge in solar panel manufacturing has torched prices, from a then-rock bottom price of 10 US cents a watt in April, according to Wood Mackenzie estimates, to 3.7 US cents a watt in August.

The dramatic slump has priced Australian panels out of their main destination, the African reuse market, as it’s now cheaper to buy new from China, says Cowie, who is leading Queensland’s stewardship program to set up a solar panel recycling industry. 

Queensland alone was exporting about 800,000 panels each year, a significant proportion of the 1.2 million being decommissioned every year, Cowie says.

The pressure is now on to prevent a swathe of decommissioned but reusable panels from hitting landfills.

Recycling is coming

Cowie says by the end of the year there will be more than a dozen solar recyclers working in Queensland, mostly dismantling panels and transporting them to existing hubs. But she expects as many as 14 to be running in the state by the end of 2025.

“I initially thought that would be too many and there would have to be consolidation, but with about 1.2 million panels coming off Queensland roofs in the last year and reuse markets now closed, we need more investment in recyclers,” she told Renew Economy. 

Pan Pacific’s recovery rates in solar recycling are not common. Australia has a number of companies that can do it and are entering this field, but some of these operations just crush the glass and recover the aluminium surrounds, leaving the high value metals and silicon behind.

Others working in the high-recovery space are Victoria-based Elecsome, which commissioned its first upcycling plant in Victoria this year and has cut deals with AGL and Italian energy giant Enel Green Power Australia around building processing plants either on their sites or using their materials.

Ewaste operator Sircel secured $5 million in funding in July to build solar recycling into its facility in Parkes, New South Wales (NSW).

And Australia’s first dedicated solar recycler, South Australian company Reclaim PV, has been setting up a second plant in Brisbane.

It aims to recycle 70,000 panels a year at the South Australia plant alone, having been collecting and storing them over the past decade, and through a deal with Canadian Solar diverted 2.6MW-worth of that company’s panels from landfill in 2022.