The Northern Rivers has enthusiastically embraced rooftop solar since it was invented. Now a locally established initiative is tackling the other end of the problem: what happens when the panels come down?
ReSolve Global has established a dedicated renewable-resource recovery and solar panel collection facility at Tyagarah, next to the old Bluesfest site.
The business was formed by Ben Pietzsch and Anthony Salera. Ben is also the founder of solar and battery installer ProSolar Australia, and has witnessed an explosion of waste recently.
‘The panels that are coming off roofs have often got 30-year warranties, and they’re coming off in eight to ten years,’ he told The Echo.
Driven by the battery boom and the switch to electric vehicles, households are chasing ever more output from the same patch of roof — and the industry’s instinct is to bin the old gear.
‘It wants to sell new, new, new all the time, because that’s where the government money is,’ Ben explained. With commercial rebates now allowing rollouts of up to a megawatt, he expects a massive uptake of panels coming into the country, ‘probably more than we’ve ever seen’ – and, with it, a flood of hardware coming back down.
Waste with value
The insight that this was waste with value came from Ben’s business partner Anthony Salera, who owned a 33-acre former car-wrecking yard at Tyagarah. ‘He said, “Why are we chucking this stuff out? This can be repurposed, resold.”’
ReSolve grew out of that conversation — Ben bringing the solar business, Anthony the location and expertise with machinery and materials handling.
Solar panels suitable for reuse are tested and given a second life. Renewable energy equipment which can’t be safely reused is responsibly recycled.
ReSolve also provides asset tracking, via an app they’ve developed called ReTrace, which issues authorities and homeowners a live certificate showing exactly what happened with their panels.
That transparency matters, Ben Pietzsch argues, because the recycling sector has a credibility problem. He said a federal pilot program stalled amid concerns that some operators were ‘a front’ – claiming to recycle while shipping panels overseas to be burnt, or quietly sending them to landfill.
‘That’s why we’ve created the ReTrace app: to ensure that when people give the panels to us, they’re traced and tracked.’
Recycling process
ReSolve Global is working together with John Hill at Pan Pacific Recycling, just over the Queensland border. This is a facility that can process up to 1,600 panels a day, recovering materials including silica, aluminium, rare earths, copper and silver.
‘There’s between three and 20 grams of silver in each panel,’ said Ben Pietzsch. ‘Potentially 30 per cent of the world’s silver is tied up in rooftop solar, and that’s just going into landfill.’ With plenty of room to expand at Tyagarah, there are plans to do more on-site processing locally down the track.
ReSolve also has social ambitions. Solar panels still in good condition will be stockpiled and rebuilt into affordable systems for halls, schools and lower-income households, and Ben is keen to offer local employment opportunities as the business scales up. ReSolve has already collected more than 1,000 solar panels from local households and businesses.
Ben Pietzsch is currently courting local government across the region (Ballina Council has been especially receptive) with a pitch to take solar waste out of local tips altogether. ‘Let us handle it, and let us be your partner.’
While he hopes government at various levels will see the benefits of building the circular economy, Ben says the business case stacks up either way. ‘We’re doing this because it’s something that needs to be done.’
‘We believe the Northern Rivers is the right place to build this model,’ he said. ‘We want to close that loop.’
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