When Inter-Island Solar Supply rolled out its recycling service for solar panels last August, the company expected nominal interest.
"We thought we'd maybe get 10 modules a month, or something like that," said Will Giese, the senior director of government affairs for the Solaray Corporation, the parent company of Inter-Island Solar Supply.
Giese and the team at Inter-Island Solar soon realized that they had seriously underestimated the demand for solar panel recycling in the islands. In their first year, the company received thousands of solar modules from customers — an amount "hundreds of times larger in volume than I had anticipated it was going to be a year ago,” Giese said.
That could be a sign of an even bigger surge in recycling that's yet to come. Giese estimated that by 2030, there will be more than 100,000 individual solar systems across the state over 10 years old, leading to a large wave of decommissions.
“Then you have this waste issue," Giese said.
What about all those old panels?
Recycling solar panels makes sense for a couple of reasons, Giese said. Several materials used to make solar panels are critical for the clean energy transition, and demand currently outstrips supply. And on small islands where land is scarce, no one wants solar panels crowding landfills.
But customers looking to recycle panels still face some barriers. One is cost — right now, customers need to pay $47 for each solar module to be recycled through Inter-Island Solar Supply. A typical single-family home may have anywhere between 10 to 20 modules, so a homeowner may need to shell out several hundred dollars for the service.
"This isn't a problem without a solution. It's just there is a cost associated with them," said Rocky Mould, the head of the Hawaiʻi Solar Energy Association.
Mould suggested that policymakers could consider incentives to make solar recycling more affordable for consumers and the industry.
Should the state step in to manage the waste?
Michael Cooney, a professor at the Hawai‘i Natural Energy Institute, thinks the state could take a more hands-on approach. He was tasked with preparing a report on photovoltaic waste, as well as lithium-ion batteries, for state legislators in 2022 and has since consulted with a handful of state agencies on the topic.
Cooney believes Hawaiʻi should enact a statewide stewardship program into law that can manage revenues, offset costs and handle the logistics of solar recycling.
"That's the only way you're going to organize all of this,” Cooney said. Without cost-effective and user-friendly options for customers, Cooney anticipates a rise in illegal dumping as more solar panels reach the end of their lives.
Cooney applauded the work Inter-Island Solar is doing and said the state could be doing more to support them, like offering tax credits or land to store decommissioned panels. But he has concerns about outsourcing the state's entire solar waste strategy to a single private company.
“What if they were to go out of business, or what if they were to decide to leave that part of the business?” Cooney asked.
Giese said Inter-Island Solar Supply has no plans to curb its recycling service.
“At the end of the day, we're a business, and we want to be able to obviously make money,” Giese said. “But we're a renewable energy business, so we want to make sure that we're not making Hawai'i worse than what it was when we found it.”
