Elecsome transforming end-of-life solar panels

ElecSome's site in Kilmany. Pictured is the glass pulveriser (blue, left) and the deconstruction/storage shed (right, back).

Tom Hayes

A FIRST of its kind in Australia, in Kilmany sits the country’s first solar panel upcycling facility.

ElecSome transforms end-of-life solar panels into “higher value products”.

As well as end-of-life solar panels, ElecSome also deconstruct and upcycle damaged solar panels – which have faced either weather, transportation or installation damage.

The solar panels are collected and transported to ElecSome facilities or their collection centres throughout Australia.

In 2015, ElecSome established under the Ojas Group umbrella. Ojas Group were founded in 2008 to design, supply, and deliver power and communication cable in the Australian market.

ElecSome Chief Executive, Neeraj Das. Photos: Tom Hayes

ElecSome was part of the research untaken in 2020 in conjunction with the University of Melbourne and RMIT University on end-of-life options for solar panels.

Two years later, ElecSome received a $500,000 Victorian state government grant and a $500,000 NSW state government grant for its operations, giving them the ability to launch the SolarCrete biproduct.

Following these findings, ElecSome received documentary and EPA approval and a building permit to begins construction of the first plant in Kilmany. A year later in 2023, the first processing plant was up and running in the Wellington Shire.

The ElecSome head office is in Keysborough, but processing stations are located all over Australia including Kilmany (Wellington Shire, VIC), Richmond Valley (NSW), Toowoomba (QLD), and East Pilbara (WA). All processing sites have a pickup/drop off point too.

Once the glass is broken into shards, it is ready to be pulverised into artificial sand.

The primary part of the solar panels that are upcycled is the glass, which is refined into a “nano-engineered concrete aggregate”, branded as ‘SolarCrete’.

This process saves cement mix manufacturers from 50 to 80 per cent of river sand which is the typical ingredient of the product.

ElecSome provided the artificial sand to be trial as a part of the North East Link. The concrete batching plant, Boral, ran the trial.

ElecSome Chief Executive, Neeraj Das said the trial was a success, with no issues arising from the test. Victoria’s Big Build is set to release footage on the artificial sand trial.

Every other part of the solar panel is recycled in one way or another. PV battery grade Silicon wafers and electric conductors can be re-used. Silver and copper can be re-used as a raw material for other industries. Aluminium frames can be repurposed for cans or other solar panel frames, and the plastics and polymers “enter established sustainable recycling channels”.

An ElecSome employee works the semi automated deconstruction system. Photos: Tom Hayes

In summary, about 97 per cent of every solar panel is upcycled and/or repurposed.

SolarCrete is ElecSome’s upcycled pre-mix concrete product. The upcycled product is essentially a sustainable alternative to sand, protecting the environment from potentially hazardous waste.

Not only is SolarCrete a sustainable alternative, but its performance matches up with the regular option. It is also viewed as the budget-friendly option, as one of the best substitutes on the market, according to Elecsome’s website.

The recommended application for SolarCrete has been found to be driveways, pathways, footings, postings, curbs and shed flooring.

Since the start of operations, it took ElecSome three months to acquire nearly 100,000 solar panels which were at their end-of-life or were damaged.

The process of upcycling solar panels is actually more straightforward than one might suggest.

Thousands of damaged solar panels are stored on site in Kilmany.

At this stage, ElecSome employees semi-automatically pry the structure of the solar panel apart, before nothing is left besides the bi-fold glass of the solar panel.

All of the other parts are upcycled or recycled to their given destination mentioned previously.

The glass is then broken into pieces and filtered into bags. From here, the pulveriser is introduced – which completes the final product of the sand.

The pulveriser runs at certain speeds which determine how fine the artificial sand result is, the faster it runs, the finer the artificial sand.

Deconstructed solar panels are left with the bi-fold glass.

The sand is then packed in bags, ready to be sent off for projects of many kinds, also mentioned before.

The ElecSome site at Kilmany has many new developments on the way and is always changing as the idea comes to life.

A new shed is set to be built at Kilmany and is currently in progress. This will mainly be used for silicon and/or silver recovery from the solar panels. This will include more equipment which is currently being stored in the deconstruction shed. Construction of the recovery shed is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Also in the words is a batch mixing plant on the Kilmany site. This is currently in progress; however the completion date is still unknown.

With plenty of space on the Kilmany property, there is endless opportunities for storage developments and upsizing, but for now, ElecSome is just doing what is needed as they venture deeper into this industry.

(Originally published August 13 2024)