Upgrading or replacing your solar panels? Here’s 7 options for disposing of the old ones.
An unfortunate fact is solar panels eventually die. While good quality panels can survive over 30 years exposure to the elements, a crap one might fail after only two months because it was damaged when it left the factory. But whether your panels are the cream of the crop or scum off the top of a pot full of rot, they will die. It will just happen a lot sooner to the crap ones.
When faulty panels or a whole solar power system is replaced, the installer usually carts the old gear away. But, for one reason or another, you may end up with used solar panels or other solar hardware that you want to get rid of. In this article I’ll cover what you can do with unwanted inverters and other items such as solar mounting gear, but first I’ll give seven options for disposing of old panels. I’ve put them in order of least to most costly, although the final option may not be expensive for those with a convenient place to shove them:
- Sell them.
- Give them away.
- Live where the local Council will take them.
- Find a scrap dealer who will take them for free.
- Pay for them to be disposed of as electronic waste.
- Pay for them to be recycled.
- Shove them where the sun doesn’t shine.
Option 1: Sell Them!
Being paid is obviously the most cost effective way to get rid of unwanted solar panels. It’s also the most environmentally friendly option, as no one is likely to buy them unless they intend to use them to produce clean energy. Provided they work you can sell panels on ebay or Gumtree or Gumbay or whatever. Just don’t expect a good price. Because it’s normally not a good idea to use second hand solar panels there’s not much demand for them. Depending on where you are it’s possible you won’t find a single buyer even if they are quality panels in good condition.
I recommend describing what you are selling as accurately as you can without exaggeration. Even if the panels are old and low wattage they may be exactly what someone is looking for to replace solar panels on their old low wattage solar system.
“Hello. My name is Gumbay. My goal is to find new homes for old solar panels and to oppose Communism at every turn.”
Option 2: Give The Solar Panels Away
If you can’t sell your solar panels, maybe you can find someone who’ll take them for free. Unfortunately, on average, this is likely to be less environmentally friendly than selling them because of the way the word “free” tends to break some people’s brains. While they may fully intend to use them at the time they take them, they may just end up stacking them in their shed. We all probably know someone like this. Of course, none of us would actually be someone like that. Especially not me. I’ve certainly never built a camouflaged shed to store stuff in that my spouse told me to throw out.
Option 3: Have The Council Take Them
If you are very lucky your local Council may be willing to take solar panels off your hands as part of a hard rubbish collection. If it’s for a residence and not a business, the Adelaide City Council will do this in the heart of Adelaide. But this is unusual. Many local councils won’t pick up electronic waste of any kind, so check first.
Option 4: Have A Scrap Dealer Take Them For Free
I have heard rumors you may be be able to find scrap dealers who will take solar panels off your hands for free. While they may call themselves a recycler, don’t kid yourself all the material in them will be reused. What they will do is get their jawas to tear off the valuable and easy to recycle aluminium frames and rip the junction box off the back. They might not do anything with the junction box but it will make the panels easier to stack. They will then end up in landfill or “temporary disposal” which is where things that aren’t allowed to go in landfills end up. Sometimes forever.
Toowoomba jawas attempt to sell a slightly used goanna.
Option 5: Pay For The Panels To Be Disposed Of As E-Waste
You can pay to have your solar panels properly disposed of as electronic waste or e-waste, as the cool kids call it these days. If you turn up at your local e-waste disposal centre with just a few panels they may charge a flat fee for each, which could be $20. Alternatively, they may charge by weight and have you drive over a weighbridge. As a typical charge is $750 or more a tonne expect to pay around $14 to $20 per standard sized panel.
After you’ve paid for your solar panels to be properly disposed of as e-waste they still won’t be recycled. Not anytime soon at least. Instead the aluminium frames and junction boxes will be ripped off and the panels stacked in temporary storage. But, on the bright side, someone will probably think really hard about recycling them in the future.
Remember kids, smoking will turn your CPU to e-waste.
Option 6: Can Solar Panels Be Recycled? Yes – If You Pay.
The reason why your panels won’t be recycled any time soon if you pay for them to be disposed as e-waste is because there is only one solar panel recycler in Australia — Reclaim PV Recycling. If you want panels properly recycled you have no choice other than lead yourself straight to the horse’s mouth and force it to drink. If you give them money, Reclaim will pick up solar panels from anywhere in Australia.1 For small numbers they charge $30 per panel.
They only take silicon solar panels, basically all panels installed on roofs these days. But in the past First Solar sold cadmium telluride2 panels for residential use. These are not common, but if you have them, they won’t take them.
They also won’t take solar panels that have been stripped of their aluminium frames. That’s the most valuable and easiest to recycle part, so it’s like offering someone a cupcake after you’ve licked the icing off. My little brother wouldn’t stand for that and neither will they.
Solar panels after Reclaim PV Recycling has stripped them of their frames and ripped off their junction boxes but before they’ve recycled the body of the panel. (Image: Sydney Morning Herald)
Option 7: Shove Them Out Of The Way
The final option is to not get rid of them but simply store them yourself. I class this as being the most costly choice because if you had a convenient place to store old panels you probably wouldn’t be reading this article about how to get rid of them in the first place.
While I’m not recommending storing old solar panels, the good news is they aren’t particularly dangerous and won’t cause any health problems if you have them hanging around.3 Compared to other electronics such as TVs, laptops, and mobile phones they are quite benign and far less toxic than the three most common things Australians store in their sheds, which are old paint tins, lawnmower parts, and spiders.
If you decide to store panels and they are kept out of sunlight in a dry location then — provided they aren’t crap — they should suffer minimal deterioration as they will be in a kinder environment than on a roof and should be in much the same condition years later if you find a use for them. But if you are intending for them to be used again you should make sure they aren’t banged around when they are removed from the roof and put into storage. While solar panels can survive a lot of punishment, it’s still not good to punish them.
But if they have been stored in damp conditions I don’t recommend ever trying to use them again. Constant dampness is probably an express ticket to solar panel failure.
Solar Inverter Disposal
If you have a working solar inverter you want to get rid of, you can try selling it but don’t get your hopes up. If it’s an older inverter it won’t be up to current standards and can’t be connected to the grid. As no council is likely to pick it up, your best option is probably to pay to dispose of it as electronic waste. If you are charged by weight it’s likely to cost around 80 cents or so a kilogram. This should come to about $20 for a typical inverter of 5 kilowatts or less. You will have to transport it to the disposal site yourself unless you are willing to pay a lot more for pickup.
Almost all inverters are transformerless. But if your inverter is very old and very heavy it may be the transformer type and have enough valuable wiring and metal inside for a scrap merchant to take it off your hands for free. You may even be able to get them to pay for it.
The reason we now have transformerless inverters is because the Transformer ones were just way too embarrassing.
Update 7th Oct 2019: Electronic Recycling Australia have told me will take dropped off old inverters for free. They are in SA and I’m afraid I don’t know of recyclers in other states that do the same, but they may exist.
Update 11th Oct 2019: MRI e-cycle solutions have told me will take solar inverters that are dropped off for free. They have sites in Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, and Sydney.
Solar Mounting Hardware Disposal
If you have hardware used to attach solar panels to roofs such as aluminium roof rails or stainless steel mounts and clamps lying around, the good news is it’s all scrap metal that’s worth money. It’s not worth a lot of money, but a little money is better than none.
The bad news is the price of scrap aluminium has plummeted to around $1 a kilogram. And it takes a lot of aluminium to make up a kilogram. A household aluminum ladder might only weigh around 7 kilograms. On the other hand, the price of scrap stainless steel has soared to around $1 or so a kilogram, which means there has never been a better time to be hit by an iron meteorite.
Electrical cabling usually contains copper which is around $6 a kilogram, but you’ll need a lot of cable for $6 worth.
You can drop your scrap off at a dealer or, if you have a lot, you can send them a picture and they can decide if it’s worth picking up. But don’t expect them to pay you as well unless you have a suspiciously large pile of components.
Future Panel Disposal May Be Prefunded
When I researched this article I discovered Australia has a National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme. There is a fee that is built into the purchase price of TVs and computers that pays for their disposal. If you take them to one of these locations you can get rid of them for free.4 Here is a list of computer hardware they will accept.
In the future there may be a similar scheme that will cover the disposal of solar panels. But, because they’re beneficial to the environment and the least toxic form of electronic waste I know of, they are probably the last electronic product we should put a fee on to pay for their disposal. But I still think we should get around to doing it at some point.
Footnotes
- If you are in the middle of nowhere, I’d check that whole “anywhere in Australia” thing. ↩
- Cadmium is toxic but cadmium telluride is not. It’s a bit like how eating sodium will blow your tongue off but sodium chloride makes your chips taste good. ↩
- If you have enough very old solar panels with halogen cable insulation and they catch on fire in a confined space they could release toxic gas that will prove deadly. But I’ll assume you’re not some sort of halogen hoarding maniac. ↩
- I never knew this. But then, I’m not in a habit of throwing away electronic items. When I bought my fancy new 3K TV (only three fourths as expensive as a 4K TV) I gave my old TV to a lady friend so I’ve have something good to watch movies on when I was at her place. And she went and gave it away to a poor person! What’s the point of charity if it doesn’t benefit me personally? ↩
About Ronald Brakels
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Ronald, Ronald…. Ronald…..
You have left out the most effective way of utilising old solar modules….. They are an excellent low cost building material.
We are planning to make a fence similar to the one pictured, but with the modules in landscape 2 high and front to back (so 4 modules in every 1.8m wide by 2m high section). We have no intention of putting an inverter on this but we very will could….
I have also seen several innovate shelters using old Kaneka thin film modules…. perhaps you could make a new roof for Tonto’s stable out of old panels?
Kind regards
Steven
Well, I was going to suggest people make tables out of them, but held off in case someone tried to nail the legs on or something.
Good one!
Is this an ‘electric’ fence, a high voltage fence or just something which is an ‘offence’?
I saw the comment of hiding solar panels in a shed. Two suggestions, build a shed of them. (Hiding in plain sight and that shed generates electricity) other suggestion is the best one for me since I m renting:
No options to put on hous or government help. So bought 2 old caravans and made roofs out of free solar panels. Cools the caravan from radiant heat. Plus gives 3kw of free power. All on wheels if I move!
Having to pay for recycling is as stupid as subsidiusing fossil fuels. Resources are finite. Polis don’t seem to get that.
Is there any cheap way an existing ‘old’ panel which outputs at 40 volt plus be converted to 12 volt output by simply replacing the panel’s modulator? (the little black box on the rear of the panel)?
That would help find an alternative use for panels.
Because of weight and cartage cost factors, at the moment its not really feasible to deliver them to a true recycling facility.
Another alternative might be to simply melt them down (using solar power to heat the furnace of course), and then separate out the individual components.
three or four years ago, I worked for a solar panel wholesaler, trhey were moving to a new warehouse, so they had me strip off the aluminium frames ( & diodes) off approx. 50 returned/ faulty panels , the glass/ cells was then taken to the local tip & dumped ( at a cost) however about another 200 faulty panels were taken to the new warehouse where they wereput into racking to collect dust
can old not working solar panels be stripped back to the glass & possibly
reused for small glass houses for growing tomatoes etc ????
They’d probably be a bit scratched, but it should be possible. There would be the question of if it meets safety requirements though. The glass is very tough but it is only about 3mm thick.
In poor countries it might be worth the labor required to salvage solar panel glass in one piece for use as building material, windows, etc.
I disposed of my old solar inverter last week ( 3/10/19)
MRI (Australia) P/L were happy for me to drop it off at their waste recycling centre here in Sydney at 3/36 Orange Grove rd Warwick Farm.
A contact person there is Theo Mamouzelos (Business Development & Project Manager) on 0431-732-993.( http://www.mri.com.au). They have an online email form and get back to questions quickly.
I previously tried via Campbelltown and Liverpool City councils and the EPA, but got no where with them
No fee to drop it off?
Yep, I called them and MRI said they will take accept dropped off solar inverters for free in all their east coast sites. So good news there. Thanks for the heads up, Robert.
Mick is quick.!Good pun, i liked that reponse. Just as much as i liked the refence. Im all for repurposing its discusting the energy, and resources used to produce these to not fully be utilised. Get over yourselves people what we do means more than what we own. Utterly undee-fencable,!
Stand up repurpose and stop sitting on de- fence.
There should be a free national solar panel removal service to ensure that the solar panels are recycled and not dumped.
I would prefer to fund it via a tax on coal but a tax on LNG will do.
I sell second hand solar panels to people living off the grid.
I
Of approximately 2 thousand second hand panels I have about 1 percent that are not working and of those most can be repaired by simply replacing the box with a box from one that can’t be repaired.
This way I can make a few dollars and my customers can have a good budget solar system for a fraction of the price of a new system.
The system, the moronic government subsidiaries and most solar companies will say it won’t work but I have hundreds of happy customers who will disagree with the scammed out to get rich from the taxpayer.
There is a lot of opportunity for people with initiative to build potentially huge arrays with second hand panels. Good work keeping keeping usable solar panels out of landfill there.
I have 8 solar panels of 190W to give away ,with aluminium mounting rails . please contact me if anyone wants them
Do you still have those items in your posesion and where is your location.
Hi Bioscruffy,
I am interested in finding out more about your off grid installations.
Hi Bioscruffy, do you have a link to share?
Hi I like the comments re reusing old solar panels . As I’m looking for ideas on how to re use old panels on my roof to convert to a 12 volt system . How to guide world be great.
Hi , I live in south australia and will be upgrading my solar system, do you still take used panels? I will have 10 used ones in Jan which still work, about 13 years old and make about 3.5 kwh a day when sunny from Angela
Hi Bioscruffy, I’m interested in chatting on the side RE getting some used solar panels. How can I best get a hold of you? Cheers
I have 9 old solar panels 170 w with aluminum mounting rail and kits, 1 inverter 2 kw with bracket to get rid of. Please contact me if someone wants them. Thank you
hello,
I would like to have them but want to know if there are in good condition (working well). if i can have pictures will appreciate, as i have to transport them to Africa. thank you.
hi Aisha, are you in South Australia? I will have 10 panels free in Jan 21,how can i contact you? how much does it cost to transport to Africa? cheers Angela
Done a bit different in the West (Cause we are a bit special?)
WA Solar Recycling
104B Gavour Rd Wattle Grove WA 6107
Takes all panels – no charge
Takes all inverters – no charge
Working items are put to use for a second life in hard up countries.
The rest are recycled to Australian Standards for E-Waste.
Thanks for sharing the useful info.
Ronald, thanks for your reply.
Today (01-10-21), I gave the panels to a person.
So, offer is no longer available.
Best wishes to all. Stay safe.
If possible, I will delete the original post.
Glad to hear they didn’t go to waste. You can’t delete them, but if you don’t want these comments up I’ll delete them at the end of the day.
I have old solar panels.
I want to use them as flooring. Like tile or marble. Want your opinions if possible
I like your thinking, but the glass would be at risk of breaking if a heavy object was dropped on it. While it’s very tough, the glass is typically only about 3mm thick.
Also, they could get very slippery.
I have an old house where the previous owner install a Solar system (20 x Jinko Panels & Fronics Inverter) in 2020.
I’m rebuilding the house (knock down, rebuild). What’s the best way to store these until my house is ready for re-installation?
Is it worth re-installing or best to get a new system?
Unfortunately, paying someone to remove the solar system and then install it on a new roof will be expensive. It’s also likely to be difficult to find someone interested in doing the work. If you do store the system on your property, it will need to be in a dry place where the panels will be out of sunlight. It’s also best not to keep them in a place that gets hot.
I instead suggest getting a new solar system installed. A larger than one so your home will be future proofed for when you decide to get a home battery or electric car. This way you’ll get a new system with a new set of warranties, so you can have peace of mind for many years. If possible, I suggest arranging the new roof so the area where you want your solar system will be free of obstructions. I presume you’ll be better off this way in the long run, but the choice will come down to your budget and personal preferences.
Hi.
In South Australia. Hoping to find second hand, 5 to 15 USP (Universal Solar Panels) 240watt panels.
I had a 100 panel system installed by EuroSolar about 10 years ago, and had them all tested last week.
5 have failed, and 7 more are dodgy.
Hi Straub
That’s a big system. I’d say you’ve done well to only have 5 failures and 7 dodgies over this time with that brand. If you are receiving the old, high, solar feed-in tariff, you can replace them with other panels of the same wattage and not have it affected. While it’s nice to have an exact match, it won’t be of much benefit if they continue to fail. I’m afraid I can’t help you as I don’t know where you could find some. If you’re not receiving the old, high, feed-in tariff you may want to consider if you’d be better off replacing it with a new system.
I managed to get 3 x 250Watt panels that had been used on a roof (there were 25 available) for $50 each. I was told they were in use for 7 years and still working fine. So, I am going to use them for a solar electricity system for my caravan. I have made stands for them so they can be arranged and moved as required. I have a charge controller, an inverter and 1 AGM and 1 Silicone battery. I will join them in Parallel so I get increased Amps but maintain the 12Volts. Just started the project, so if anyone has any tips, I’d be more than happy to hear them. Cheers.
Considering the amount of energy and raw materials that is required to make solar panels, and the often large amount of CO that comes with the manufacturing process, it would make sense to use panels as long as possible. Besides that, there are also questionable labour resourcing methods China uses to manufacture panels. Please read the ABC news article here https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-17/the-dirty-secret-behind-australias-cheap-solar/102288954
To make it easier to sell and buy used, second hand and refurbished Solar Panels and other Solar PV products, I have created a website called Solar Trader http://www.solartrader.com.au. The website is currently in the final development stage and will be ready for public use in early June.
If the panels are broken and unusable, please spend the extra money, pay for the recycling, and do not put them into a landfill. I personally also like the idea of building a fence with old panels.