NT Recycling with BESS

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Location: Bulgaria

CAPEX 15 000 000EUR 

Recycling solar panels and building batteries for renewable energy are critically important for several reasons, all of which contribute significantly to advancing renewable energy, supporting green deals, and promoting environmental sustainability.

First, recycling solar panels conserves resources by recovering valuable materials like silicon, silver, and rare metals, reducing the need for new mining and conserving natural resources. It also helps in waste reduction by preventing solar panels from ending up in landfills, thereby reducing the environmental impact associated with electronic waste. Economically, recycling solar panels brings cost savings by lowering the costs of manufacturing new panels, making solar energy more affordable and accelerating its adoption. Additionally, the recycling industry creates jobs in collection, processing, and administration, contributing to economic growth. Regulatory compliance is another critical aspect, as many regions have regulations mandating the recycling of electronic waste, including solar panels. Recycling ensures compliance with these regulations and helps avoid potential fines.

Building batteries for renewable energy is equally important. Batteries provide essential energy storage and grid stability by managing the intermittency of renewable energy sources like solar and wind. They store excess energy produced during peak times and release it when production is low, ensuring a stable energy supply. This contributes to grid reliability by providing frequency regulation, voltage support, and load balancing, thus reducing the risk of blackouts and enhancing overall grid reliability. From an economic perspective, batteries offer benefits through peak shaving and load shifting, which reduces electricity costs and alleviates stress on the grid. They also reduce the need for additional power plants and grid infrastructure, saving costs and resources. Batteries enhance energy independence and resilience, enabling remote or off-grid locations to rely on renewable energy, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, and enhancing energy security. In the event of natural disasters or grid failures, battery storage provides backup power, ensuring critical services remain operational.

These efforts contribute significantly to the broader goals of renewable energy adoption, green deals, and sustainability. Recycling solar panels and using batteries for energy storage make renewable energy systems more efficient and cost-effective, encouraging wider adoption and increasing reliability by addressing the intermittency of renewable energy sources. This alignment with green deals supports policy goals aimed at reducing carbon emissions, promoting sustainable energy, and creating green jobs. Furthermore, demonstrating a commitment to sustainability through recycling and advanced energy storage can attract investments and subsidies from governments and environmentally conscious investors.

The environmental and sustainability benefits are profound. By promoting the use of renewable energy and minimizing waste, recycling and energy storage contribute to significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, thus reducing the carbon footprint. Efficient use of resources through recycling ensures the sustainability of renewable energy technologies, reducing the environmental impact of raw material extraction. Proper disposal and recycling of solar panels and batteries also prevent hazardous materials from polluting the environment.

In conclusion, recycling solar panels and building batteries are pivotal to the future of renewable energy. These practices not only conserve resources and reduce waste but also enhance the efficiency, reliability, and economic viability of renewable energy systems. By supporting the goals of green deals and promoting environmental sustainability, they play a crucial role in the transition to a cleaner, more sustainable energy future.

The project is able to generate positive cashflows only with the BESS system and is fully financed by the loan. Our projections are for loan financing the entire project with an interest. 

We will build and install a solar panel recycling ♻️ center and renewable energy production on the roof. Also, we will install a BESS system of 20MWh for balancing the grid and renewable power generation. This will allow us to balance and optimize renewable energy to offload the excess electricity from the grid during peaks and supply it when there are deficiencies. Also, we will save the critical row materials. from broken or out-of-exploitation solar panels.

Economic Rationale / Business Model

Resource Recovery and Value Extraction

• Material Reclamation: Solar panels and batteries contain valuable materials like silicon, silver, lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements. Recovering these materials reduces the need for new mining and lowers production costs for new products.
• Cost Savings: Recycling reduces the costs associated with sourcing raw materials. It also mitigates the environmental and financial costs of landfill disposal.

Market Demand and Circular Economy

• Growing Market for Recycled Materials: There is increasing demand for recycled materials in manufacturing, driven by sustainability goals and cost considerations.
• Circular Economy Model: Adopting a circular economy approach, where products and materials are reused and recycled, reduces waste and promotes long-term sustainability. This model can attract environmentally conscious customers and investors.

Job Creation and Economic Development

• Local Employment Opportunities: Recycling facilities create jobs in collection, processing, and administration. This contributes to local economic development and can garner community and governmental support.

We decide to integrate solar panel and battery recycling with BESS and renewable. Power generation to provide different income streams. With this model, we can have income form

• sales of electricity
• Sales of critical row material
• Balancing fees.

Also, this will allow us to expand in the future with different ways like battery recycling, the production of new solar panels, the production of polysilicon, and expanding the BESS with CAES or other types. This model gives us income from day one and a wide variety of opportunities even to apply for EU funding for critical row material management. It is also important to mention that we will save lots of waste that otherwise will end up in landfills and we will lose precious metals like aluminum, silicon, copper, and cadmium

Existing or potential bottlenecks 

Potential risks Potential risks are the supply chain in the feedstock. The solar pane waste needs to be collected separately and it's a specific waste that is not regular. Not a typical life of a panel is 10 years. This means that now we can process panels installed 10 years ago. Otherwise, we can process panels damaged by natural disasters like hailstorms or defective ones. The boom of the solar panel started 4-5 years ago so we can consider that a large amount of waste panels will be available in 2-3 years. 

For the 1st year, we need to advertise heavily and look for weather-damaged panels. This could be mitigated by government funding like Solar panel manufacturers will have to pay for disposal under new EU rules. In terms of the actual project, this will not threaten the project because we include the BESS system to provide liquidity. The risks for the BESS are limited and easy to overcome. They include permits and licensing for balancing operators. Once we get permits we can work. Once we get a license for grid balancing power we will provide an additional revenue stream. Another risk mitigation is the recycle line for batteries as the battery waste is well established and it will be operational quickly.

Additional information 

The project is calculated to be profitable only from BESS operations. This way we minimize the risk of lack of liquidity. Also, the battery recycling line will provide work and income as the batteries are well established as waste management.

The project is able to generate positive cashflows only with the BESS system and is fully financed by the loan. Our projections are for loan financing the entire project with an interest rate of 3-3.5% and ROI of 9.5% for a 10-year loan with local banks. We are open for equity and loan. Rate of 3-3.5% and ROI of 9.5% (estimated only with working and income from  BESS)  for a 10-year loan with local banks. We are open for equity and loan.

Posible expansion is enlarging the BESS with CAES system or increase the capacity of the recycled materials/.