Recycled solar panels could be a source of strategic materials

Old solar panels are starting to pile up, and the industry is working out what to do with them. Solar panels last 25 to 30 years, so panels installed in the early days of the residential solar boom are now approaching retirement. Nationally, the numbers are expected to grow fast: about 1 gigawatt of panels will reach end of life in 2030, rising to nearly 11 gigawatts a year by 2050.

Right now, recycling a panel costs $15 to $45, while sending it to a landfill costs just $1 to $5. That gap is why a lot of old panels end up dumped rather than recycled. Europe requires manufacturers to fund panel recycling, but the U.S. has no such federal rule, and state laws vary widely.

A Florida recycling company, OnePlanet, is trying to close that gap by making recycled panel materials valuable enough to recycle on their own merits. It's building a new processing line that mechanically separates panels into glass, aluminum, copper, silver and silicon, without chemicals or heat, and plans to eventually refine that silicon into a form used in manufacturing. The company says recycled silicon uses far less energy and produces far fewer emissions than material mined and refined from raw ore.

None of this requires homeowners to do anything right now. But if you have solar panels, or are considering installing them, it's a sign that a real disposal and recycling system is beginning to take shape for when your panels eventually wear out, which could affect costs or options down the road depending on where you live.