SOLARCYCLE has started recycling solar panels at a massive new facility in Cedartown, Georgia, signaling that solar recycling in the US is finally moving from pilot projects to industrial scale. The 255,000-square-foot plant is now processing thousands of end-of-life solar panels each week using the company’s proprietary next-gen recycling technology.
SOLARCYCLE says the new lines deliver more than double the throughput of its earlier systems, while diverting 100% of material from landfills and recovering about 96% of the value locked up in silver, copper, aluminum, glass, and other critical materials in each panel.
The company plans to ramp the facility to about 1 million panels per year by the end of 2026. At full capacity, SOLARCYCLE says the site can handle up to 5 gigawatts’ worth of solar panels annually. Cedartown is also the first piece of a larger, vertically integrated recycling and manufacturing campus.