The Circular Economy for solar farms

The R&D Renewables and Future Energy Systems teams are exploring ways to integrate circular economy principles into the lifecycle management of EDF power solutions' solar farms.EDF Power solutions has several solar farms in the UK and Ireland, both in operation and planning stages. Applying a circular approach—focused on reusing, recycling, and reducing waste—can enhance resource efficiency, extend asset durability, reduce waste management costs, and support regulatory compliance. It may also unlock new business opportunities.

Key Findings

The teams assessed materials used in solar farm construction, end-of-life processes and opportunities to apply circular practices. They found that solar farms contain high-value materials such as silicon, copper, silver, steel and aluminium. Several UK and European companies are developing recycling technologies for solar panels, inverters and transformers.

Circular Economy opportunities go beyond recycling and can be found across the lifecycle of solar farms, including:

• Design: Collaborate with manufacturers to create components that are easier to repair, reuse or recycle.
• Operation: Enhance maintenance, monitoring and repairs to maximise the lifespan of solar farms and their components.
• End-of-life: Reuse solar panels for lower-demand applications and remanufacture components like transformers.

Next steps

The project is a first step in initiating circular thinking for solar farms at EDF. It provides a roadmap with recommendations and next steps. Some can be implemented by procurement and compliance teams, others will likely result in follow-up R&D projects to further investigate their feasibility and implementation. 

Find out more

Daisy de Selliers, Research Engineer, R&D Future Energy Systems