PVTIME – US PV recycling firm SolarCycle has officially opened its module recycling facility in Cedartown, Georgia. The facility is capable of processing up to 5GW of photovoltaic modules each year. The company also plans to build an adjacent PV glass factory that will use the recovered glass from the modules as its manufacturing feedstock.
Picture: SOLARCYCLE
The Cedartown plant currently processes thousands of solar modules per week and aims to increase its capacity to one million modules per year by the end of 2026. The facility uses SOLARCYCLE’s proprietary, next-generation advanced recycling technology, with a throughput that is more than twice that of first-generation recycling lines. The facility can recover silver, copper, aluminium, glass, and other critical minerals with a claimed recovery rate of 96%.
The 255,000-square-foot recycling plant is located next to SOLARCYCLE’s planned 5GW PV glass factory. The glass factory is set to be the world’s first facility to use crushed glass from end-of-life PV modules as raw material. It is scheduled to break ground in mid-2026 and start commercial operations in 2028.
SOLARCYCLE management states that more than 80% of the glass factory’s planned capacity has secured customer order commitments. In August 2025, Illuminate USA signed a five-year agreement to become the factory’s largest customer, purchasing domestic PV glass to supply its 3GW annual module factory.
Suvi Sharma, CEO and co-founder of SOLARCYCLE, noted that scaling PV recycling to industrial levels and delivering competitive economic benefits to customers is at the core of the company’s next growth phase, thereby retaining large volumes of critical materials in the domestic supply chain as PV installations continue to accelerate.
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