About Us

Australia leads the way in rooftop solar installations, but solar panels are emerging as a growing source of waste and many of the solar panels currently being disposed of have many years of service life remaining.

The International Renewable Energy Agency notes that solar panels are designed to operate for 25-30 years but many home owners and businesses are disposing of solar panels that are less than 10 years old due to a variety if reasons like roof replacements, building renovations or demolitions or maybe just to install a larger system.

With this earlier than expected retirement of PV systems we estimate that Australia will accumulate up to 1 million tonnes of solar panel waste by 2033 — if laid down end to end these PV panels would encircle the Earth 3 times.

Many of these panels are expected to be fully serviceable and in the next 10 years we estimate that Australia is potentially set to dispose of 8.1GW worth of fully serviceable solar panels which is equivalent to all of the solar panels installed in Australia between 2017 and 2019.

We established Second Life Solar to create a fully circular model for solar energy from reuse of perfectly good panels all the way to recycling.

Our longer term vision is to develop technology that allows you to remanufacturer a new solar panel from all of the components of an old one.