{"id":2100,"date":"2026-07-28T07:50:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T11:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/uk\/?p=2100"},"modified":"2026-07-28T07:50:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T11:50:17","slug":"solarcycle-opens-solar-panel-recycling-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/uk\/solarcycle-opens-solar-panel-recycling-plant\/2100\/","title":{"rendered":"Solarcycle opens a 5 GW solar panel recycling plant in Cedartown, Georgia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Solarcycle has begun commercial operations<\/strong> at its new solar panel recycling facility in Cedartown, Georgia, the company announced on January 29, 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 255,000 square foot plant is designed to process up to 5 gigawatts of panels<\/strong> per year at full capacity, making it the largest dedicated solar recycling facility in the United States.<\/p>\n

What the facility processes and recovers<\/h2>\n

A solar panel that reaches the end of its useful life contains far more than just glass and plastic.<\/p>\n

The Cedartown facility houses Solarcycle’s proprietary advanced recycling<\/strong> technology, which delivers more than double the throughput of the company’s first-generation recycling lines.<\/p>\n

The system enables 100% landfill diversion and recovers 96% of the value<\/strong> from silver, copper, aluminum, glass and other critical minerals inside a panel.<\/p>\n

Scale and ramp up schedule at Cedartown<\/h2>\n

The site is already processing thousands of panels per week and will scale toward one million panels annually by the end of 2026.<\/p>\n

At full capacity the facility can recycle 10 million panels<\/strong> per year, enough to handle an estimated 25 to 30% of all US retired solar panels in 2030.<\/p>\n

Solarcycle already operates facilities in Odessa, Texas and Mesa, Arizona, so Cedartown adds a third processing node<\/strong> on the East Coast.<\/p>\n

The Georgia location makes logistical sense for the growing number of solar farms across the Southeast and mid-Atlantic states.<\/p>\n

Many of those installations are now approaching the end of their first 20 year service contracts.<\/p>\n

The adjacent solar glass factory and what it means for US supply<\/h2>\n

The recycling plant is one half of a larger campus Solarcycle is building in Cedartown.<\/p>\n

An adjacent glass factory will be the first facility<\/strong> in the US to produce specialized glass for crystalline silicon photovoltaics, with planned capacity of 5 to 6 gigawatts per year.<\/p>\n

The company has already secured customer commitments covering more than 80% of planned capacity<\/strong>, including a five year agreement with Illuminate USA to supply glass supporting 3 GW of annual panel production.<\/p>\n

The glass factory is on track to break ground in mid-2026 and deliver its first production in 2028.<\/p>\n

That timeline would close a notable gap in the US solar supply chain where most glass currently comes from overseas.<\/p>\n

Why the timing aligns with a coming wave of retired panels<\/h2>\n

The United States installed its first large wave of utility scale solar between roughly 2010 and 2015.<\/p>\n

A typical panel carries a 25 year performance warranty, meaning millions of panels<\/strong> will start reaching retirement age before the end of the 2030s.<\/p>\n

The US Energy Information Administration projects almost 70 GW of new solar capacity will come online in 2026 and 2027<\/a>, a 49% increase in operating capacity compared with the end of 2025.<\/p>\n

More panels installed now means a larger end of life stream in two to three decades.<\/p>\n

Building recycling infrastructure ahead of that wave is the core rationale behind the Cedartown campus.<\/p>\n

The US currently has no federal mandate<\/a> requiring solar panel recycling, which leaves the economics largely market driven for now.<\/p>\n

Industry observers have noted that most of the sector is still coming to terms with the scale of inevitable end-of-life panels, measured in the tens of millions and then hundreds of millions, and growing.<\/p>\n

That context<\/strong> underscores why Solarcycle is moving to lock in long term supply agreements with panel owners now, while the market is still forming.<\/p>\n

Limits, costs and what remains uncertain<\/h2>\n

The Cedartown campus is ambitious, but several milestones<\/strong> remain on the horizon rather than in hand.<\/p>\n

The adjacent glass factory has not yet broken ground, and any delay to the mid-2026 construction schedule would push back the point at which Solarcycle can run a fully closed loop domestic supply chain.<\/p>\n

Solarcycle expects to employ more than 1,250 full time workers across both locations once the campus reaches full capacity.<\/p>\n

That figure is contingent on both buildings hitting maximum throughput well into the late 2020s.<\/p>\n

The panel recycling industry still lacks consistent pricing for recovered materials, and market volatility<\/strong> in silver and aluminum affects the economics of each batch processed.<\/p>\n

Solarcycle has not publicly disclosed the total capital cost of the recycling building or its operating margins.<\/p>\n

What is clear is that the facility represents the most concrete step yet toward a domestic circular economy<\/a> for solar equipment in the United States, at a moment when the country’s installed base is growing faster than at any point in its history.<\/p>\n

Whether the economics hold through the ramp up will determine whether Cedartown becomes the model the industry follows or a cautionary note about building recycling capacity too far ahead of the supply curve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Solarcycle has begun commercial operations at its new solar panel recycling facility in Cedartown, Georgia, the company announced on January 29, 2026. The 255,000 square foot plant is designed to process up to 5 gigawatts of panels per year at full capacity, making it the largest dedicated solar recycling facility in the United States. What … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2099,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solar-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2143,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2100\/revisions\/2143"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}