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Dive brief:
- Solar panel recycling company Solarcycle is investing $344 million to set up a solar glass manufacturing facility in Cedartown, Georgiathe company announced on February 15.
- The company will use recycled solar panels to produce five to six gigawatts crystalline silicon photovoltaics, or solar glass, annually, according to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.
- The site will create 600 jobs in manufacturing, engineering, research and other sectors. Construction is expected to begin later this year, with production scheduled to start in 2026, according to the governor’s press release.
Diving knowledge:
According to Solarcycle’s press release, the removed solar glass will be used to make new panels before being sold to domestic solar manufacturers as a way to fill a gap in the US solar panel supply chain.
“Solar panel manufacturers, what they do is buy finished materials, like specialty solar glass or specialty frames,” Solarcycle CEO and co-founder Suvi Sharma told Waste Dive last year. “Today we supply the market with raw materials, and then these materials are remanufactured into a final product that could enter the solar industry.”
Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Solarcycle has been raising funds to expand its presence in the United States and invest in its research and development.
The company closed a $30 million Series A financing last March to expand recycling capacity at its Odessa, Texas, facility. The Odessa site, which opened in 2022, will process decommissioned solar panels from Denmark-based Ørsted in a June 2023 deal.
The company also received a $1.5 million grant from the Department of Energy under the bipartisan Infrastructure Act to fund its R&D on the recovery of metals and materials extracted from retired solar panels.
Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, 44 solar manufacturing projects have been announced, according to the environmental and economic advocacy group E2. Legislation’s push to grow PV production has boosted demand for Solarcycle’s glass, co-founder and chief commercial officer Jesse Simons told Manufacturing Dive in a Feb. 27 email.
“Customers who will purchase SOLARCYCLE’s ultra-low carbon glass are building or expanding facilities in the U.S., and this expansion is driven in large part by the incentives and tailwinds created by the climate and clean energy bills and infrastructure of the Biden administration,” Simons said.
A company that takes advantage of the IRA is Qcells, solar cycle newest customer The company’s Cedartown solar glass facility won’t be far from Qcell’s two Georgia facilities in Dalton and Cartersville, which will supply panels for Solarcycle to reuse.
