Towards Reduced Solar PV Industry Waste: A Feasibility Assessment of Novel Ownership Models

Abstract

Since 2010, solar Photovoltaic (PV) has been the single fastest growing power generation technology worldwide. However, given that the useful lifetime of a PV installation currently stands at 25 years and that current industry End-of-Life (EOL) management techniques, focus primarily on recycling and disposal, it has been estimated that by 2050, there will exist 78 million tonnes of hazardous solar PV waste. One potential solution that could aid in mitigating this impending environmental crisis, is determining whether or not the lifetime of commercial and residential solar PV installations can be elongated from the industry standard of 25 years to 50 years. Two novel solar PV ownership models, “The Cascading Tiered Commercial Ownership model” (CTCO) and “The Elongated Residential Ownership model” (ERO) have been created by projecting the technical outputs and economic Net Present Values (NPV) of a 60 kwp commercial and 4.8 kWp residential installation operated over a 50 as opposed to 25 year period. As expected, the Business as Usual (BAU) model which required that the commercial residential installations be decommissioned and replaced at 25 years, produced more energy over a 50 year period than both lifetime elongation models. However, the cascading tiered ownership model and the elongated residential ownership model had an NPV that was higher than the BAU model. Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) analysis identified that a rate of more than €0.25 per kWh would be required for the BAU model to be favoured, while the rate of module degradation favoured the elongated ownership model for all rates under 2% per year. Alterations to the FIT at 25 years assuming preference for environmentally sustainable business models, led to a greater disparity in results in favour of the novel ownership models. Irradiation levels only favoured the BAU ownership model when in excess of 1750 kWh/m2. Altogether, the projected technical output of both hypothesised ownership models suggests that elongation of PV system lifetime is economically advantageous and should be considered as a viable alternative to other models in both commercial and residential market segments.