New Solar Panel Recycling Facility Is Coming to Georgia

Solarcycle, a company handling end-of-life solar panels, is opening a new solar panel recycling facility in Cedartown, Georgia. 

According to the company, the upcoming 5-gigawatt facility will span 255,000 square feet and will eventually have the capacity to recycle around 10 million old solar panels annually, or as much as 30% of the country’s retired solar panels by 2030.

To start, the facility will handle recycling of around 2 million solar panels per year and will scale up to meet growing demand. It will utilize Solarcycle’s process to recover up to 99% of photovoltaic materials from retired panels and is especially useful for bifacial panels. According to Solarcycle, many recycling facilities use the same technology to recycle monofacial and bifacial panels, leading to a less efficient system that doesn’t recover as many high-quality, useful materials.

In addition to opening the solar panel recycling facility, Solarcycle will operate a solar glass manufacturing facility next door that will use the recycled and recovered materials from retired solar panels to make new solar glass. It is expected to be the first facility of its kind in the U.S. to manufacture glass for crystalline-silicon (c-Si) photovoltaics. The project was made possible partly through funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, under which Solarcycle received $64 million in Qualifying Advanced Energy Project Credits, CleanTechnica reported.

“The new recycling facility is move-in-ready and will be operational mid 2025. The adjacent glass factory will be operational in 2026,” the company said in a press release.

“By scaling recycling and solar glass manufacturing through a vertically integrated process, we are filling a critical gap in America’s solar supply chain and closing the loop for domestic solar manufacturing,” said Suvi Sharma, CEO and co-founder of Solarcycle.

The manufacturing facility will use recovered materials from the recycled facility next door to produce solar glass, then sell that solar glass to U.S.-based solar manufacturers to boost the country’s solar supply chain, Solarcycle explained. For instance, in October 2024, Solarcycle announced a partnership with manufacturer Runergy Alabama to recycle the manufacturer’s old panels and supply it with new solar glass made at the facilities in Georgia, Waste Dive reported.

Together, the two Solarcycle facilities will employ around 1,250 full-time workers, according to Solarcycle.

“As Georgia continues to lead the nation in attracting jobs from emerging industries, we’re thankful SOLARCYCLE is moving up creation of these opportunities in northwest Georgia, benefitting that entire region’s economy,” said Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. “I want to thank our local and state partners who made this accelerated growth in Polk County possible, and I look forward to its impact in the years to come.”

As CleanTechnica reported, the recycling facility is slated to begin operations by mid-2025. The solar glass manufacturing facility, which is expected to produce about 5 to 6 gigawatts of solar glass per year, is expected to be operational by 2026.