00:00:03 Chris Sass
Your trusted source for information on the energy transition. This is the insiders guide to Energy podcast.
00:00:16 Chris Sass
Welcome to another edition of the Insiders Guide and Energy. I'm your host Chris Sass, and with me today is Conor Hogan, the co-founder of One Planet Recycling. Connor, welcome to the program today.
00:00:26 Connor Hogan
Hey, Chris. Thanks for having me.
00:00:29 Chris Sass
So we're talking recycling, but this is an energy podcast. You guys do some pretty unique recycling. What is it that your plant your company has started out to do?
00:00:39 Connor Hogan
Yeah. So our company is exclusively focused on recycling solar modules. I got here from the energy world, saw the need for it couple years ago. It probably actually back in 2018 if I could date it started to see the need for this from the energy world.
00:00:58 Connor Hogan
And more or less came to the conclusion that there really wasn't a good solution. Fast forward to post IRA implementation and a lot of credits and and you know just General Grant funding opportunities started to pop up. So pulled the trigger to jump into the space with three other Co founders.
00:01:18 Connor Hogan
One from the renewable energy space as well, and then two others from the steel manufacturing and metals recycling world.
00:01:26 Chris Sass
And when we've talked in the past, you you've mentioned the importance of the background of your Co founders. You you've said that, hey, you know, if I just came at that's just with an energy background or not a non recycling background, I might not be successful. Help me understand a little bit of how their backgrounds are helping your company and the kind of impact that makes.
00:01:45 Connor Hogan
Yeah, sure. So to get here all unpack really quickly or to get there all unpacked really quickly how I wound up in this spot. So Goldman to go back to the 2018 story at Goldman, I started to see a real need for this. There was one project specifically in Southern California where we ran into.
00:02:05 Connor Hogan
A lot of pushback from the permitting, zoning, perspective, and it all kind of centered around the assumption surrounding the decommissioning bond for the project, which, you know dovetails very neatly into a discussion around recycling so.
00:02:20 Connor Hogan
Kind of went down the rabbit hole from a technical diligence or due diligence background went a little bit more deep into it than I probably would have liked to, but it's ultimately what kind of sparked the passion for this because I came to the conclusion, like I said, there wasn't really a good solution left. Goldman started up at a actually a a climate tech software company called Euclid.
00:02:40 Connor Hogan
They're kind of a consulting firm that has a.
00:02:42 Connor Hogan
Business to business SaaS type type element to them. Same story. So solve the need for this popping up even more so in the 2020 you know post COVID kind of a kind of.
00:02:54 Connor Hogan
A time frame.
00:02:56 Connor Hogan
Up until about a year ago and so going back to the discussion on IRA saw, a lot of the credits and grants coming out of the IRA and and more or less.
00:03:04 Connor Hogan
Come to the conclusion, hey, this is, you know, it's one of those moments in time where if I don't go do it, I'm probably gonna kick myself, you know, 10 years down the line. When I watch somebody else do it so.
00:03:14 Connor Hogan
Reached out to a couple different co-founder or the the Co founders in the recycling World and Steel world, and really the the point for me or to go back to your to your question was you know I know a lot about solar. I could talk to you about solar for probably the entire podcast, but what I didn't know a lot about was recycling. And when I spoke to the two Co founders.
00:03:34 Connor Hogan
And the recycling world and the steel manufacturing world, it kind of shut a lot of light on the economics of the business.
00:03:40 Connor Hogan
And really kind of changed my perception of the the growth for this business. So it it, you know, I think really what you start to realize is that it's hard to replicate experience. And so the beauty of our team is that under one umbrella, we have a wealth of a wealth of experience and expertise in both renewable energy asset management.
00:04:00 Connor Hogan
So we can, you know, speak that language as well as the steel recycle the steel manufacturing recycling world where you know we have a.
00:04:08 Connor Hogan
Large network of.
00:04:09 Connor Hogan
Of potential buyers, a lot of history around plant commissioning and startup for for these types of activities, specifically metals recycling so.
00:04:17 Connor Hogan
So with that, you know we I think we have a pretty significant competitive advantage and that I think kind of gets translated to our customers in the form of industry-leading pricing and a couple of other bespoke services that are really unique for developers and IP's.
00:04:37 Chris Sass
OK so.
00:04:39 Chris Sass
Let's slow rollback into this from the beginning. You said that the IRA and some of the advantages from your financial background caught your attention. What specifically caught your attention, how how is starting a solar recycling companies today aligning to some of the IRA and some of the programs?
00:04:56 Chris Sass
Out.
00:04:56 Connor Hogan
There. Yeah. So the the big light bulb.
00:04:59 Connor Hogan
For me was the 48 C investment tax credits. They were extended with the IRA. They're they were extended to include recyclers of advanced energy equipment. So if you're a recycler that you know takes in solar panels, wind panels, etcetera.
00:05:16 Connor Hogan
The credits were provisioned for those types of projects, and so when that got passed they just closed round one or they they announced round round one awardees not too long ago when the credits were announced. That was really the big light bulb moment for me because it started to look a lot more like a solar project in the sense that you have, you know.
00:05:36 Connor Hogan
A investment tax credit. There's a sponsor, equity type, type of a type of a financing structure.
00:05:43 Connor Hogan
And so that was really attractive. And and that I think was if I could, you know, tie it off to one element of the IRA, that's probably the big driver for me personally, that kind of peaked interest was the this specifically 48 C There's also 45 X, which is a PTC or a production tax credit that I think fits a little bit. It kind of fits.
00:06:03 Connor Hogan
Another business model, not ours necessarily, but those two are the big drivers for me. I think that that kind of, you know pushed the interest over into into the.
00:06:12 Connor Hogan
World.
00:06:13 Chris Sass
Does the business model sustain itself without tax credits? I've I've got a lot of people that you know, either for or against tax credits for long term sustainability. This is something that someone would do if there weren't tax credits. Is this just enough to put you over the edge or is it really fundamental to the the functioning of these kind of businesses?
00:06:31 Connor Hogan
Yeah, good question. It's hard to say right now at this juncture, right, because the economics are still unfolding. I think that's one of the, that's one of the challenges right now for us is, is you know, understanding the unit economics in a space that's rapidly evolving. So you have on one side technology that's extremely immature.
00:06:50 Connor Hogan
It's in its infancy stages and and you know the idea is over the next decade similar to kind of the solar growth curve. We'll see this technology.
00:06:59 Connor Hogan
Rapidly develop and expand and mature and our I guess our internal estimation is probably by the mid twenty 30s. This will be a pretty well established technological process or you know process of technology so to speak.
00:07:14 Connor Hogan
The tax credits I think you know, I think the again my opinion here, I think that they are they're going to serve a huge role in incentivizing the investment at this stage which otherwise is left ambiguous to a lot of investors because of the fact that the unit economics are still you know evolving. So I think that the credits are going to go a long way to kind of incentivize that.
00:07:35 Connor Hogan
Capital deployment today.
00:07:37 Connor Hogan
Versus, you know, five years from now where it might be a little bit too late where we kind of you know this.
00:07:42 Connor Hogan
The.
00:07:42 Connor Hogan
Problem has eclipsed the the the capacity and so I think to your point, I think that there's a case to be made in the absence of credits, this would still be a viable business. Definitely. I think that the trade off would be you may not have the same level of.
00:07:57 Connor Hogan
Of investment interests today, as you otherwise would a couple of years in the future that if that's a.
00:08:02 Connor Hogan
Good answer to that.
00:08:03 Chris Sass
I I think it's it's it's your answer to give I guess the the question I would have.
00:08:08 Chris Sass
Of 20-30 you use the words today. Are we too soon? I mean, the solar industry is still pretty. It's been around, but the the kind of growth and deployment we're seeing is it time now to start recycling panels and is there enough demand to support this kind of industry? I think you've mentioned there's two or three solar recyclers that specialize in this today.
00:08:29 Chris Sass
Umm.
00:08:31 Chris Sass
What kind of demand is in the market? What's the need?
00:08:33 Connor Hogan
Yeah. So I think to start off, maybe we dissect where we get panels from or what what the what are the the loss events so to speak for, for to size the market. So there's four areas that that we see module losses originate from. So to start at the very beginning.
00:08:52 Connor Hogan
Manufacturers, if you. If you're a manufacturer of solar panels, you're going to have some type of QA, QC loss or, you know, manufacturing yield. So we see from the very earliest stages, manufacturers will generate some small percentage of their total production in the form of defective modules. So those modules.
00:09:11 Connor Hogan
To be obviously, you know, eligible for recycling. So if you were to take the entire, you know, US based manufacturing capacity and apply some some loss factors there, hypothetical loss factors, that's one source of panel.
00:09:24 Connor Hogan
The next source of panel.
00:09:24 Chris Sass
So just curious, let me stop you there secure. So. So where is the US capacity at geography?
00:09:25
Good. Yeah.
00:09:31 Chris Sass
Where? Where would I find most manufacturing of solar panels in?
00:09:35 Chris Sass
The continent? Us.
00:09:35 Connor Hogan
Yeah.
00:09:37 Connor Hogan
Yeah. So there's gonna be a lot on the West Coast. There's been a big push to have a lot of manufacturers actually in the southeast. So you think you've seen it with, you know, QQ cells healing and a couple others.
00:09:49 Connor Hogan
First solar is really active in in Ohio as well as Alabama, so it's kind of it's it's pretty well evenly dispersed, I'd say between I guess the East Coast and the West Coast. The the key distinction though is the type of module. So obviously, first solar produces a thin film module versus other manufacturers are producing.
00:10:09 Connor Hogan
Bifacial or mono facial modules if you're at a segment in terms of that, you may see a little bit of a tilt for where the.
00:10:18 Connor Hogan
The the the silicon crystalline silicon modules are being are being produced, but I'd say ultimately it's a pretty even split between East West coasts for for where?
00:10:27
OK.
00:10:27 Chris Sass
Cool, I just curious. All right, so that's one component. So you've got the, the, the production manufacturers, they have some defects or whatever that would go to recycling.
00:10:29
Yeah.
00:10:36 Connor Hogan
Yep. Then you're also going to have construction losses. So when a plant is built, the kind of rule of thumb is that the average losses during construction are going to be around half a percent.
00:10:50 Connor Hogan
That could be plus or minus based on the based on really the EPC contractor, you have some ECS who have substantially higher and lower just kind of.
00:10:57 Connor Hogan
Based on on.
00:10:58 Connor Hogan
You know processes and in protocols that play in place with those PC's, so you'll have a range of of construction losses. Just assume you know for baseline purposes, assume.
00:11:09 Connor Hogan
Half a percent. So you could take the total projected installed or you know the the total projected installed capacity in a year and then assume half a percent of that is going to be generated in losses.
00:11:22 Connor Hogan
The third rung would be operating losses. So when a facility is COD and you have a 30 year life or a 30 year, you know under right for that asset, you're going to have a loss profile that kind of ticks up with that with that project. As time goes on. So you may have really low losses at the beginning of the projects life.
00:11:42 Connor Hogan
Kind of to be expected, and then as time goes on, that loss number kind of starts to creep up. So you could, I think Enbrel has really good data on this as well. But the number that they published, I I believe was around 1/4 of a percent to a half a percent in the first five years per year.
00:11:58 Connor Hogan
And then years 5 through 15, that kind of ticks up into the 1% range and then 15 plus you start looking at 2% and the sources for that could be, you know, torque tubes, bending modules. You could have micro cracking. I think that's been a big issue with the industry even since I was back at Goldman.
00:12:18 Connor Hogan
Hail damage has kind of been the the new one that I think you've seen a lot coming out of the insurance insurance world and a lot of the problems that they're having with renewable energy, property insurance and then just, you know, net net cat, so hurricanes, tornadoes, etcetera, all of that stacks up to about anywhere from half a percent to 2%.
00:12:38 Connor Hogan
Throughout the assets lifetime given you know depending upon where it's at from COD and then the 4th and the the soon to be biggest is going to be repowering and decommissioning. And so if you were to look at the the solar growth curve, the way to to kind of approximate this.
00:12:55 Connor Hogan
Is the useful life for these assets is, say, 2525, thirty years. And so if you have an asset that was built in 2000, it's come it's one year off from being at at you know the end of its end of its life. And so there's a lot to unpack here because from the owner operator world there's this unique calculus that goes on to kind of determine whether or not an asset.
00:13:18 Connor Hogan
Is attractive for repower or if they want to go ahead and kind of wind down wind down operations and decommission the plant. And it's kind of a.
00:13:26 Connor Hogan
A trade off between the the real estate value that the assets sitting on and then, then and then power market pricing and then you know your standard CapEx type, type type determinants and so ultimately owners are are left with the decision that they have to make whether or not they repower and decommission and ultimately 100% of the panels at that point in time.
00:13:46 Connor Hogan
Would obviously have to be recycled and so we kind of think that.
00:13:50 Connor Hogan
Our our our position is that a lot of the assets that were built in 2010, they have much lower module wattages. So back, you know back then I think would be like 275 would it would have been a pretty you know per year utility scale panel compared to today's 45550 plus type type you know bifacial panels, there's a huge technology.
00:14:10 Connor Hogan
Gap between those panels for you know of of yesterday versus today. And so we have an assumption that a lot of those assets that would otherwise be repowered at 25 years may get repowered you know slightly earlier than that at the 20 year mark because.
00:14:24 Connor Hogan
Theoretically, they could essentially swap panels out and double nameplate capacity. And so we think that there's going to be kind of a shift in the beginning where a lot.
00:14:32 Connor Hogan
Of those assets are.
00:14:33 Connor Hogan
Repowered probably earlier than they were underwritten for and then as time goes on, you know, I think you'll see that technology, the technology growth curve for solar starts start to level out and then that'll.
00:14:44 Connor Hogan
Probably look more like a traditional 30 year useful life where you'd have those assets repowered comms, but those are the four key areas and to go back to your original question.
00:14:53 Connor Hogan
Just from the manufacturing losses, operating losses and construction losses, there's there are gigawatts worth of of solar that are that are that are being generated that are eligible for recycling and then to that point the percentage of that that actually is being collected or recycled is right now pretty low.
00:15:12 Connor Hogan
It's probably, you know, single or or maybe now double digit percentages.
00:15:17 Connor Hogan
I I I'd probably.
00:15:18 Connor Hogan
Err on the side of single digit percentages are actually being.
00:15:20 Connor Hogan
Cycled largely in part due to cost due the cost prohibitive nature of of the of the service, so you know that's I think one of the things that we're shooting to have is a a significant decline and and the and the and the cost of of recycling but for now.
00:15:33 Connor Hogan
That's kind of where.
00:15:35 Connor Hogan
That's kind of where the industry is at and I think that you should probably consider it even at this stage.
00:15:41 Connor Hogan
Is if you're a developer.
00:15:42 Connor Hogan
There's a lot of benefits to to having that proactive stance when it when it comes time to go to the community planning.
00:15:48 Connor Hogan
Boards and zoning boards, etcetera.
00:15:50 Chris Sass
All right, so.
00:15:51 Chris Sass
Through this conversation, I think we've been making an assumption that I want to clarify because I think there's danger. Use the word recycle.
00:16:00
Yeah.
00:16:00 Chris Sass
And we all think we know what recycle means.
00:16:05 Chris Sass
Help me get a definition from your perspective what it means to recycle a solar panel. What percentage of that is going back? What materials am I getting out of a solar panel and how does that differ for different types of panels and different technologies you've just already in your description so far you've described the evolution of panels and where they're going, whether it's bifacial, whether you know whatever the technology is.
00:16:27 Chris Sass
What does recycle mean? Help me baseline that.
00:16:29 Connor Hogan
Yeah, yeah. Great.
00:16:31 Connor Hogan
Great question. When we get a lot as well and it's it's I think it's extremely important. So we'll start with just where the the markets at 80% of the market is mono facial crystalline silicon panels. The remainder of that 20% is overwhelmingly bifacial crystalline silicon.
00:16:49 Connor Hogan
Panels and then the last portion small. The smallest portion portion is is thin film. Now they expect thin film to grow as time goes on.
00:16:58 Connor Hogan
But in today's state, in in the state of today's market, it's overwhelmingly mono, facial crystal and silicon panels. So we're gonna, I'm gonna start and focus there because that's.
00:17:07 Connor Hogan
80% of the market.
00:17:09 Connor Hogan
Those panels just using, you know, baseline averages provided by enril it's it's rough, it's overwhelmingly lasts about 3/4 of the panel is is glass. So 75% of the panel's weight is in the form of glass.
00:17:23 Connor Hogan
About 7 to 9 percent is in the form of aluminum. 6 to 7% is in the form of plastic, and then another. I think it's like 6 to 8% or so is.
00:17:33 Connor Hogan
In.
00:17:33 Connor Hogan
The form of silicon the remaining is the remaining percentage, which I believe is in there is around 2% is a mixed metal.
00:17:42 Connor Hogan
Stream which is 98% copper and then 1% silver and then the other one percent is 10 and a couple other different smaller quantity metals.
00:17:55 Connor Hogan
So that's the that's the material composition, so and that's that's great to understand your question though, where does that all go? So when the panel reaches our facility, it's for it goes through a series of steps that disassembles or or, you know reduces the the panel to those specific commodities or components. So the glass is ground.
00:18:15 Connor Hogan
Off.
00:18:16 Connor Hogan
And the glass then is separated and sorted based on the quality of the glass. The aluminum is pulled off of the module, the J box and the MC4 connectors are also stripped from the module and they all go into their respective bins. The silicon.
00:18:36 Connor Hogan
And the plastics and the copper are also collected and sorted at the end of the line, and so you end up with bags essentially for to simplify that this the the process you end up with bags of each of these different commodities. And so then the idea is.
00:18:55 Connor Hogan
To go back to the point about Price, ultimately our goal is to have every module recycled and so to get there you need to create a compelling economic picture that is, you know, ideally as close to the cost of landfilling as possible, because that makes the the choice or decision for everybody very, very simple, right? If it's penny motorcycle.
00:19:16 Connor Hogan
Than a landfill. It's a pretty it's a, you know, it's a pretty easy decision compared to a $10 per panel difference between recycling and landfilling. And that's just that's just the reality of of the world, right. Economics kind of Trump.
00:19:27 Connor Hogan
Most decisions and so.
00:19:31 Connor Hogan
Our goal is to get that price that delivers that delivered price as close as we can to a landfill. And so the idea is if we're not charging that price through to a customer, well, we have to make up for it on the back end for commodity sales. So the idea is those commodities should be sold to the highest buyer, the highest we should.
00:19:50 Connor Hogan
Our goal is to get the highest price per commodity, so that that way we can then, you know, provide the lowest cost service to a utility or to an IP or or whoever may need.
00:20:00 Connor Hogan
Panels are cycled.
00:20:02 Connor Hogan
So the glass typically is going to go to a standard glass recycling buyer. So it's going to be bottling glass bottling is a big buyer of recycled glass. Concrete cement is another one. We've also seen a couple of different opportunities with sandblasting and and some other, some other different vendors that I I won't go into detail.
00:20:22 Connor Hogan
For proprietary reasons, but glass being a big portion of of our outputs is is a really key. You know commodity to to, to market outside of that aluminum goes back into the aluminum.
00:20:33 Chris Sass
So and the glass, how the commodity market for glass, how volatile is that?
00:20:40 Connor Hogan
It's actually not really that volatile from our experience so far and I'm I'm probably not the best person to give an answer for. It probably be better to have one of the cofounders from from the the metals and recycling world talk to that. But I mean it's a it's a, it's a lot, it's an extremely large market and and glass I think the trouble with with glass with recycled glass is that it's pretty cheap to make glass.
00:21:01 Connor Hogan
From virgin materials. And so I think to your point about tax credits, one of the things would be really helpful is to have incentivize manufacturers to use more recycled content. I think that that would be a, you know, a a great thing for.
00:21:15 Connor Hogan
For our industry at least, and I know there's been some, some headway to try and do that, but the glass market is, is is substantially large, large enough for us to be able.
00:21:23 Connor Hogan
To have to.
00:21:24 Connor Hogan
To have all of our inventory sold every year and and not really be too big of a drop your bucket. Yeah, yeah.
00:21:28 Chris Sass
Let's let's just curious about that. All right, sorry to derail you. Go back. You were breaking down the the components.
00:21:33 Connor Hogan
Yeah, yeah, no problem. So then the next next bucket of commodities would be the J box and MC4 connectors. Those are going to go to a standard recycling yard where the wires would be stripped and the J boxes would go to an e-waste recycler. So then they further process those.
00:21:49 Connor Hogan
Those two materials, the aluminum, would go to a refiner or or smelter who's going to take that aluminum extrusion, melt it back down, it could go into a coke can. It could go into your automobile again, very liquid market for for for secondary aluminum the.
00:22:09 Connor Hogan
Copper and the mixed metals are going to go again to a refiner, a copper refinery.
00:22:16 Connor Hogan
The silicon is going to go probably to the steel industry and that's an interesting kind of an interesting growth vector because it's kind of one of the things that we want to focus on is potentially, you know, working with some US based polysilicon manufacturers to try and.
00:22:35 Connor Hogan
You know, ultimately have that silicon go back into the polysilicon market, but for right now, we've had, we've had a lot of interest from buyers in the steel world as well for that silicon. And then outside of that.
00:22:49 Connor Hogan
The plastics are going to go to a plastics recycler and we have a really cool buyer that's in the court right now that I can't speak to, but it's going to ultimately go back into a consumer item that will hopefully be publicizing in a year from now. So that's that's kind of where where these materials go.
00:23:06 Chris Sass
But it doesn't sound like.
00:23:08 Chris Sass
It doesn't sound like any of this is going into making new solar panels, so it doesn't seem like it's a life cycle where you go build this and then it goes back into a new solar panel and arbitrarily some of those elements may end up back. But it doesn't seem like that. That's the the.
00:23:21 Chris Sass
Current design. Is that true?
00:23:23 Connor Hogan
So we're working with some major solar manufacturers to try and achieve specifically that because that's ultimately the the end goal, right is to be able to say that, you know a solar panel is is is recycled back into a solar panel. The problem with that though is that it's it's it's a lot harder done in practice than it is.
00:23:40 Connor Hogan
And.
00:23:40 Connor Hogan
And you know and and and thought or theory and so.
00:23:44 Connor Hogan
You have to think again. You know what's? What's the trade off? Would you rather be able to say the solar panel goes back into a solar panel but it costs you $30? A panel to do it? Or would you rather say that the solar panel didn't go to a landfill and it cost you $3 to do it and it still went into a variety of different industries. And right now, I think the latter is probably the better place to start.
00:24:04 Connor Hogan
Because that's the less capital intensive objective to achieve. And then once you've achieved that, the idea would.
00:24:09 Connor Hogan
That you can you can probably tackle the former with a lot less headwear and or capital intensity to make that a reality. So our goal is to start off with delivering the the lowest cost to users because ultimately, like I said, our goal is to ensure that as many panels as possible don't wind up in a landfill, period.
00:24:30 Chris Sass
And then I I guess as we kind of come up to time one question I wonder is.
00:24:35 Chris Sass
What would keep this from happening? What what hurdles are still in the industry to keep, you know, you said we're in single digits are recycling. So how what would keep us from getting to 70 eighty 90% recycling rates?
00:24:47 Connor Hogan
It's it's cost in a nutshell, it's it's really and simply. I think it's cost. I think that there there are you know.
00:24:55 Connor Hogan
There's two sides to the cost equation. So there's one which is the the fee, the physical fee that you know a company such as ourselves.
00:25:02 Connor Hogan
Would charge a customer that's one side of the equation. The second side of the equation is that customer like you just said.
00:25:08 Connor Hogan
Has to get.
00:25:09 Connor Hogan
Those panels to our facility and so a lot of times like you know, if I if we have a project where the the bid is $10, a panel just ballpark number very easy.
00:25:21 Connor Hogan
If the tipping fee is $10, a panel that same customer may have to spend it like 15 to $20 in shipping to get that panel to our facility, so.
00:25:32 Connor Hogan
On one side, the tipping fee the the the structural roadblock there is the technology, right, because the more efficient the technology is.
00:25:42 Connor Hogan
The more that we ideally the the higher the purity of those commodities and so we can market them for a higher a higher price. And then on the flip side, the shipping is kind of a A is is a structural problem, right. Solar is a very distributed resource or you know asset class and so you have a lot of the the large scale sites are are are way out there they're you know 500 miles.
00:26:04 Connor Hogan
Out from the from, from, from, from an urban area, so.
00:26:07 Connor Hogan
You know, it's kind of shipping and the and the tipping fee cost profile collectively the all in cost to the to the consumer that's gonna I think be the biggest barrier. We have a a solution for shipping that I can't speak to you right now, but our goal is to be able to cut the shipping cost by about 50% in the next five years and and same thing with the tipping.
00:26:27 Connor Hogan
These our goal is to be sub $10 a panel all in by 20-30.
00:26:33 Chris Sass
I do have to ask one more question because you know the implication or the what I understand from what you're talking is that this is this technology can only be used for solar panel. There's something special in the way that you recycle this so.
00:26:47 Chris Sass
That means that these plants are only capable of doing solar panel recycling is that?
00:26:52 Chris Sass
Why we're shipping them 500 miles because of the technology somehow is unique to recycling a solar panel.
00:26:58 Connor Hogan
Yeah, that's correct. So if you were to send these to a normal, you know, a scrap yard, which there's, there's a, there's, I'm sure there's a scrap yard within every 100 miles of of a solar of a solar farming.
00:27:07 Connor Hogan
States the scrap yards can't aren't outfitted to process this they use it, they they have their own. They have several types of technologies to process. Everything from automobiles to, you know, construction, debris, etcetera. They don't have this technology in house and the the capital cost to to place this technology is substantial and so.
00:27:27 Connor Hogan
You end up with, you know, fully outfitted or or facilities fully outfitted, purpose outfitted, or purpose built for solar panels. And so that's why.
00:27:35 Connor Hogan
There's there's such.
00:27:36 Connor Hogan
A A distance involved with with the shipping is because the facilities have to be purpose built for solar panels and to your point.
00:27:44 Connor Hogan
Yes, they're they're there the way that we construct our facilities is to exclusively process panels over the long haul. We'll probably add on some other technology to be able to process wiring and a lot of the balance of plant type stuff that when you depart, when you decom and repower is, is kind of going to come with the panels. And so it makes it easier to as a solution.
00:28:04 Connor Hogan
Provider to to give those clients a one stop shop. Kind of a solution, but for the time being the the facilities are are purely outfitted for for the recycling of solar panels.
00:28:14 Chris Sass
Well, Connor, this has been an amazing conversation, more than I expected to find out about solar panel recycling and that it's coming along. I want to thank you so much for being a guest.
00:28:22 Chris Sass
And insiders.
00:28:23 Connor Hogan
Guide today. Yeah, Chris, really appreciate the opportunity. We're glad to talk about it and you know, thank you to you and the podcast for, for having us on.
00:28:31 Chris Sass
For audience, we hope you've enjoyed this episode as much as I did making it. Please take a second. Give us a like it or comment that really helps and follow us and subscribe to us on YouTube. We'll see you again.
00:28:40 Chris Sass
Next time on the insiders guide to Energy Podcast, bye for now.
