- Solar energy is being utilized more and more across the nation, including right here in the Big Bend and South Georgia.
- With an average lifespan of 25-30 years, the question of what happens to solar panels at the end of their life isn't a huge concern right now, but is there a plan in place for what to do with their waste heading into the future?
- Watch the video above to see what happens to solar panels that need to be discarded here in Tallahassee and the current options for recycling those panels.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
As the nation transitions to cleaner energy sources, solar panels like these are becoming more common in our neighborhoods. I'm First To Know Meteorologist Riley Winch in Northeast Tallahassee, where I'm looking into what happens to these solar panels when they reach the end of their life in Florida's Capital City.
"When the power goes out and the grid goes down, I don't even notice it."
That's Bruce Baumann, a navy veteran here in Tallahassee. He's been solar for 12 years. When he built his home with his wife just over a decade ago, they decided to go solar to save money in the future. And it worked. He told me this past month it only cost him $20 in utilities.
When I asked him what his plans were for when his solar panels reach the end of their life, he told me "You don't have to necessarily buy them and in 2 years recycle them. They're a pretty good investment all along."
This is also the sentiment shared by Baumann's solar panel installer, Al Simpler, the CEO of Simpler Solar Systems.
"Recycling, right now, doesn't look like a booming business, if you will, because there are not many panels that literally need to be recycled."
And on the scale of a single household, the waste of going solar is very low. However, when you add up every home and business going solar, especially the ones on solar sites like the one I visited in Suwannee County this past June, the waste problem begins to add up.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, by 2050, the United States is expected to be the country with the second largest number of end-of-life panels in the world, totaling nearly 10 million tons of waste.
Right now, the majority of solar panels here in Tallahassee can be repurposed.
"Most of the solar panels that are older, they're putting out less power but they're still functioning, so we put them back here and put it in the paper that for $20 you can come pick up as many solar panels as you want."
And for those panels that are either broken or unusable, Al works with recycling companies that pick up those panels and ship them to recycling locations across the United States. The effort to recycle, however, has a cost.
That led us to MARPAN recycling here in Tallahassee.
They collect solar panels to be recycled at the price of $75 per ton.
While they recycle parts of solar panels, specifically the glass, metal rings, wires, and glasses, Andrew Williams, MARPAN President, tells us a neighboring business helps ship the rest of the panel's materials to be processed at another site in Atlanta, Georgia. And the only solar panels accepted at MARPAN are those with non-hazardous materials. "A lot of them are hazardous, they've got, some of them have cadmium, some of them have arsenic, some of them have multiple different metals in them that are considered hazardous."
While MARPAN doesn't currently have the resources to recycle many solar panels due to their hazardous materials, there are businesses that can connect our neighborhoods to companies that can recycle them.
That's where Emilie O'Leary, CEO of Green Clean Solar comes in. "You want to do the right thing but then you may not have the local resources to support you on."
Her company is just over 2 years old based in Marietta, Georgia, but she works with people and businesses all over the country helping to find a solution for them when their solar panels reach the end of their lives.
"We coordinate all these logistics from the material, to the people, to the equipment, to the trucks, to the recycler."
She encourages those going solar to keep in mind the higher cost of recycling panels compared to the easy solution of trashing them.
Just as there have been incentives created to encourage neighbors to go solar, she acknowledges "People want to do the right thing. Let's give them incentive, whether it's a couple dollars per panel, but I think that would go a long way."
It's clear that solar energy will be relied on much more heavily over the next few decades, which means more waste that needs to be disposed of properly. From Northeast Tallahassee, I'm Meteorologist Riley Winch, ABC 27.
