Peak solar recycling season is here.
Are you ready to recycle your modules damaged from extreme weather, construction breakage, or something else?
No, but I want to learn more about SOLARCYCLE
Most conversations about solar end-of-life have focused on panels. That focus is understandable. Panels are the most visible part of a solar project, and study after study shows that the scale of future PV deployment makes end-of-life planning unavoidable.
But solar isn’t just facing an end-of-life challenge – it's also facing what some might call a “mid-life crisis” particularly when it comes to inverters.
Solar panels are designed to last 25-30 years. Inverters, by contrast, typically last 15 years. That means many of the hundreds of gigawatts of solar deployed in the late 2010s are already entering their first major equipment replacement cycle.
According to projections from Wood Mackenzie, an average of 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of U.S. solar projects will require inverter replacements every year through 2030, creating a significant stream of retired solar electronics. That’s nearly half the capacity installed in some recent years.
That’s why we’ve decided to start recycling Electrical Balance of Systems, or EBOS.
Electrical Balance of System (EBOS) includes inverters, transformers, optimizers, cabling, switchgear, and other power electronics that convert and manage electricity at a solar site.
EBOS may represent a smaller share of a project’s total mass compared to panels and racking. But what it lacks in bulk, it makes up for in base metals concentration.
Inside a utility-scale solar inverter or transformer, you’ll find significant quantities of high-quality copper, aluminum, steel, silver, and other conductive and structural materials. Precisely the metals global supply chains are competing for as electrification accelerates.
Taking the data from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and extrapolating linearly, a 1 GWAc solar farm could contain close to 10,000 metric tons of EBOS. Across the U.S. solar fleet, that represents a substantial reservoir of recoverable materials already in circulation.
Because EBOS contains concentrated, high-quality metals, it creates a unique opportunity: recovered materials can generate real economic value.
We are actively working to structure programs that allow our customers to receive credit for the reclaimed materials, which they can then use to offset the cost of recycling. This creates a powerful feedback loop: recover more materials, reduce reliance on primary extraction, improve project economics, reinforce circular procurement strategies.
At portfolio scale, this shifts recycling from a compliance decision to a strategic one.
High-value equipment like EBOS also carries high risk if it is not managed deliberately.
If EBOS enters poorly controlled secondary markets, valuable materials can be lost to landfill, mismanaged downstream, or exported to opaque secondary markets where the processes used and outcomes obtained are difficult to verify.
I recently read the book Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash, by journalist Alexander Clapp. He documents how electronics labeled as “recycled” are frequently exported, poorly tracked, or processed in unsafe conditions. High-value components and e-waste, just like EBOS, are especially susceptible to diversion because they often require manual disassembly and recycling is difficult to monitor. That’s why it is essential that we prioritize accountability, traceability, and verified processing when it comes to solar materials.
The rapid scale-up of solar deployment leaves little room for trial and error. Life cycle assessment work emphasizes that decisions about materials and end-of-life pathways have a measurable impact on cumulative emissions at terawatt scale.
Decarbonizing material production, especially aluminum, and improving circular material flows can dramatically reduce the cumulative global warming potential associated with PV deployment. That insight applies as much to EBOS as it does to solar panels.
This is why SOLARCYCLE has decided to expand into EBOS recycling. Investigations like that described in Waste Wars underscore the cost of getting it wrong, while PV life cycle assessments underscore the benefits of getting it right.
Our customers told us they wanted a single, trusted recycling partner that could handle everything for them. We listened. Our EBOS services will provide end-to-end logistics, certified high-recovery recycling, transparent reporting, material traceability, and the ability for customers to earn value back from retired equipment.
Recycling EBOS expands the scope of circularity, helping reclaim valuable materials, reduce reliance on primary production, and avoid the kinds of downstream risks that are possible with global waste markets.
Circularity doesn’t stop at the solar panel, so neither do we.
