Solar Power World
By Kelly Pickerel | August 31, 2026
Of the many developments in the solar industry over the last decade, one of the most exciting to witness has been the build-out of solar panel recycling facilities across the country. Once just a problem for later down the road, solar panel recycling is already happening at scale by companies fully invested in the specialized industry — We Recycle Solar, SolarCycle, SolarPanelRecycling.com (SPR) and many more.
Solar panel recycling process. Credit: SPR
Although part of a green-minded industry, recyclers don’t process solar panels just for the good feelings; they are running a business after all. Right now, the primary moneymakers with recycled silicon solar panels are the aluminum frames and extracted copper, silicon and silver.
“At the end of the day, for recycling to work, someone has to be able to consume the products you’re generating and consume it at scale,” said Brett Henderson, CEO of SPR. “When you take a silicon panel and break it down to all of its base commodities to be recirculated back into manufacturing industries, the bulk of any panel is glass. Glass isn’t a very valuable commodity. Silicon panels are economically viable to recycle [because] you’re getting to subsidize it by collecting aluminum, silver.”
Just as recyclers play the commodities market, so do manufacturers. Recent high prices for silver have led some panel manufacturers to explore models that use less of the precious metal. No-silver panels would be cheaper to manufacture, but they’d also be less valuable to recycle. Manufacturing trends like this are forcing recyclers to be some of the most knowledgeable solar panel experts on the market.
The recycling processes described here are for silicon solar panels, the dominant panel choice in the global solar industry. Although cadmium-telluride (CdTe) thin-film panels are installed on many utility-scale solar projects in the United States thanks to First Solar’s domestic manufacturing base, their unique design is not as attractive to third-party recyclers. Thin-film panels are frameless (no aluminum), and the market today isn’t asking for cadmium or tellurium.
The first step to recycling silicon solar panels is carefully removing their junction boxes and frames. The bulk of what’s left is that insignificant glass, but the cleaner and more successfully that glass is removed, the easier it is to access the more valuable components.
Glass cullet after recycling solar panels. Credit: SPR
Most R&D by solar panel recyclers is spent on glass removal, whether through grinding, force or another method altogether. SPR just completed a $12 million upgrade at its three recycling plants (in North Carolina, Georgia and Texas) to better remove glass without nicking the silicon wafers and encapsulants beneath. OnePlanet, a solar panel recycler operating outside Jacksonville, Florida, has developed a recycling process that CEO André Pujadas said can remove 99.5% of module glass at 99% glass purity. OnePlanet does this with high-velocity airflow — extreme wind fractures and breaks the glass away from the other components.
Once the glass is removed, all recyclers generally follow the same path — shredding the silicon wafer and its connections into a fine powder and sending it through density separation, which leaves copper and a silver-silicon mix. Copper is an easy sell for recyclers, while refineries can better split the silver and silicon to sell to larger purchasers.
“To bring [refining] in house wouldn’t be a competitive advantage. They’re doing this at major scale for industries around the world. SPR isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel,” Henderson said.
However, OnePlanet’s proprietary recycling process could bring an element of refining to the recycler. When cleaner glass is removed, Pujadas said that the silver-silicon mix is less contaminated by crushed glass, which concentrates the end result into 95% pure silicon with 1% silver — a more valuable commodity by refineries.
“The whole business philosophy here would be to extract and recover minerals and reintroduce them into the supply chain for re-consumption, encouraging a circular economy,” he said. “A big part of that is how much value is extracted across the entire value chain. This recycling process is very focused on a high-purity silicon. [Eventually] we will have enough silicon that it can become a feedstock for metallurgical-grade silicon production.”
Panel recyclers are already looking into future manufacturing trends to determine how they will affect their ability to stay in business, and they might show up sooner than expected too.
Shredded materials during the solar panel recycling process. Credit: SPR
With most silicon solar panels expected to successfully function for 25 years and beyond, there hasn’t been an influx of decommissioned panels from the first major wave of U.S. installations from the early 2010s. But there’s enough supply of damaged panels from shipping and handling incidents, adverse weather and manufacturing errors that recyclers have to be on top of tomorrow’s trends today.
Henderson said that SPR added bifacial recycling equipment to its processing sites barely two years after launching. “We’re getting new technology into our stream right away,” he said.
SPR has dedicated research analysts on staff to quickly follow manufacturing trends and determine if the recycler may need a new processing technology or new offtakers for different material compositions. If solar panels use less silver, the copper may be more valuable, but the silicon-silver mix might be less attractive to certain refineries. Recycling is the easy part; finding the right commodity buyers is more challenging.
“We’re starting to see technology out there to not use any silver on a solar panel, or much less of it. If it’s still this silicon-based technology, it’s just going to change the economics of it,” Henderson said. “Over time, insurance costs go higher, equipment costs go higher, labor costs go higher, regulatory costs go higher. And then if you’re going to remove one of the components that helps subsidize it, it will probably mean that asset owners are going to have this roller coaster on how recycling pricing may be.”
For example, tandem perovskite-silicon panels are still new to the market, yet many recyclers are considering how to process them. One concern is their use of lead, which would require stronger encapsulants to keep out moisture that are harder to break to get to the valuable components. There’s also the challenge with lead’s toxicity.
“It can become a hazardous material, and then you have to deal with transportation and full framework disposal under a hazardous waste scenario,” Pujadas said. “Then you have to beef up your emission systems and safety culture. It could be done, but when do you start doing it?”
That’s the conundrum in the solar panel recycling space: when is it time to invest in new processes and when can a steady stream of old technologies be relied upon? That’s why efforts that can be controlled today — improving glass removal and silicon purity — will be advantageous for any type of solar panel design.
“It’s a strange industry,” Henderson said. “Solar panels are the one singular item you’re bringing in, but there’s so many flavors.”
Kelly Pickerel has more than 15 years of experience reporting on the U.S. solar industry and is currently editor in chief of Solar Power World. Email Kelly.

Comment *
Name *
Email *
Website


Δ
Copyright © 2026 Arrowfly LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Arrowfly LLC
Privacy Policy | RSS

source