Solar panel recycling company SolarCycle is using secondhand solar panels to power its panel recycling plant in Texas.
SolarCycle has installed a 500 kW solar array made of reused panels at its recycling facility in Odessa, Texas, which can provide around half of the electricity the plant uses.
The array – which is made up of both residential and utility-scale solar panels – consists of around 1,000 decommissioned solar panels that were formerly used on Ørsted’s solar farms in Texas and in Sunrun’s rooftop solar projects. When the system reaches end-of-life five to 10 years later, the panels go straight into the recycling plant, and they’re in turn replaced with more used solar panels that still have life in them.
In other words, secondhand panels are making clean power to power SolarCycle’s recycling plant, where it’s making new product to make new solar panels. SolarCycle says it plans to expand this model to its recycling plants in Mesa, Arizona, and Cedartown, Georgia.
Check out the video about how SolarCycle’s secondhand solar panel project works below:
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