{"id":906134,"date":"2026-09-26T11:16:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T11:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/906134\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T11:16:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T11:16:15","slug":"some-households-are-discarding-solar-panels-after-just-2-years-pv-expert-says-retirement-fee-could-fix-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/906134\/","title":{"rendered":"Some households are discarding solar panels after just 2 years: PV expert says retirement fee could fix this"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of Australia\u2019s leading solar experts has called for at least some of the cost of a mandatory national panel recycling scheme to be paid by end-users, including rooftop solar households, in a bid to prevent PV modules from being discarded well before their use-by date.<\/p>\n

Dr Rong Deng, a senior lecturer at the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering at UNSW was one of the first experts to appear before a federal Parliamentary Inquiry that launched this week to nut out how best to design a national solar stewardship scheme.<\/p>\n

The establishment of mandatory scheme governing the reuse and recycling of solar in Australia is well overdue, despite the best efforts of industry groups like the Smart Energy Council (SEC) and despite a growing level of urgency to manage a growing pile of potentially highly valuable waste.<\/p>\n

The inquiry was supposed to run alongside a $25.7 million pilot that the federal government had intended to start in July, but that, too, has been delayed \u2013 much to the SEC\u2019s and industry\u2019s dismay \u2013 after a legal complaint was made about the process to appoint a scheme administrator.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This leaves the inquiry and a newly announced state-based push from New South Wales as the best hopes for establishing a mandatory solar stewardship scheme anytime soon.<\/p>\n

But as Deng told the Inquiry on Thursday, the preferred national approach that the NSW government is currently consulting on \u2013 to charge retailers and project developers with a mandatory recycling fee at the point of panel installation \u2013 might not be the best way to go.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a different view from what the NSW government is proposing,\u201d Deng told the standing committee members, which includes \u201cteal\u201d independent MPs Zali Steggall and Nicolette Boele. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy view is that a small, transparent end-of-life charge should sit at the point where the retirement decision is made.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing perfectly functional residential panels coming off the roof and, from my personal experience, we\u2019ve seen panels as young as only two years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThose panels are designed to last 25, 30 years, and because currently there is no charge to recycle and get rid of them, that really encourage lots of early retirement. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo a small price signal \u2026 may discourage unnecessary early retirement and keep working panels on roofs for longer,\u201d Deng said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What to do with discarded solar panels that still have plenty of useful life left in them is just one of the puzzles within the puzzle that is solar stewardship. An SEC-led pilot conducted in Queensland put the average age of\u00a0decommissioned\u00a0panels at just 8 years, with most able to operate for another 10\u201315 years.<\/p>\n

Reuse is the obvious solution, but this is not easy. It requires discarded panels to be handled with the utmost care during decommissioning and transportation, so that they are not damaged, and then it requires electrical testing and sing-off, so that consumers can be confident they are safe to use. <\/p>\n

As the SEC\u2019s executive general manager of sustainability, Darren Johannesen has told Renew Economy, these sort of early life panels appear so prominently in the waste stream because people are choosing to upgrade their rooftop systems as technology costs fall and as households electrify.<\/p>\n

And the SEC has warned that this practice is likely to balloon under the federal home battery rebate, as households replace old rooftop modules with newer much bigger systems to go with their discounted and plus-sized storage systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe good news is we\u2019re going to get lots of batteries and expanded systems, the bad news is it\u2019s going to create decommissioning \u2026 somewhere between an additional 7.5 million to 15-20 million [modules a year],\u201d Johannesen told Solar Insiders last year<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s a lot of modules that will be de-installed and this is why, getting back to pilots, why pilots are important. And critically, it\u2019s why we need action on a national scheme.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while the SEC favours a set-up where the mandatory stewardship fee is charged to installers and developers, and then passed on to consumers through slightly higher system costs, Rong Deng argues that it is \u201creasonable\u201d to put a modest cost at the other end of the panel life-cycle. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a system generally reaches \u2026[the] end of its useful life after delivering value for 20, 30 years, the household has already received value from that asset. They\u2019ve recovered all the value and they\u2019ve received additional value from that asset, and [so] a modest cost to responsibly manage that at the end of life, to me, is reasonable,\u201d she told the inquiry.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is also a cost question: if a recycling cost is imposed upstream on brand owners or manufacturers, that cost, or some of that cost, will eventually pass on to the customer, and it is not just that one cost \u2026 all the overheads associated with managing the cost flow will eventually be passed on to the customer,\u201d Deng says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if it\u2019s eventually passed on the customer, if it\u2019s eventually the customer who pays, then a small direct, transparent charge at the point where the retirement decision is made is probably the lowest-cost option to fund the scheme, and the lowest cost option to these customers,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deng says she will also put this argument in a submission to the NSW consultation on a scheme.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen too many\u2026 panels retire way too early, and they\u2019re perfectly fine,\u201d she told the inquiry. \u201cAnd you will probably hear from other people how difficult [it is] to reuse \u2013 even if [the panels are] perfectly fine. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so hard to find a reuse market. So the best option is just to keep those panels on the roof and let them keep generating electricity. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is a small charge \u2026 when the retirement decision is made, people may want to keep the panels there for longer, and we eliminate the waste problem from the beginning. I mean, we don\u2019t eliminate all the waste problem, but we eliminate some waste problem, which shouldn\u2019t really exist, at the beginning.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the second point is on the cost,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the customer pays \u2026for end of life after the asset retires, they\u2019ve recovered their value from this asset. But now we\u2019re asking them to pay for even more upfront. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf the customer has to fund the scheme, then why don\u2019t we let the customer fund it with a least cost \u2026 lowest cost option,\u201d Deng says.<\/p>\n

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