West Holdings Corporation (West Group) has entered into a basic outsourcing agreement with Kinki Denden Yuso., Ltd. (Kinki Denden Yuso) to facilitate the reuse and recycling of decommissioned solar panels.
Under this partnership, West Group will collect information on the disposal of solar panels from power plants it has installed and maintained, including those requiring replacement due to repowering projects or damage from natural disasters. The decommissioned panels will then be transferred to Kinki Denden Yuso for recycling and reuse. Kinki Denden Yuso will serve as the central contact point for recycling waste solar panels nationwide.
West Group has installed approximately 69,000 solar power systems, ranging from large-scale solar farms to residential installations, with a total capacity of around 3,000,000 kW. Kinki Denden Yuso has begun solar panel recycling operations at its intermediate processing site in Yawata City, Kyoto Prefecture, using dedicated recycling equipment, “ReSola.”
With the expiration of the power purchase period under the Feed-In Tariff (FIT) program introduced in 2012, along with damage to solar panels from natural disasters, the volume of waste solar panels in Japan is expected to increase. Establishing a robust recycling system is essential to meet the growing nationwide demand for solar panel disposal and reuse.
