Rich Strömberg will serve as a panelist at NREL PV Circularity Workshop

A student works with Nunatak Alternative Energy Solutions staff on a Habitat for Humanity house, using reused solar panels and rails.
Photo by Rich Strömberg/ACEP.
As part of a project developed out of research by ACEP’s Rich Strömberg, a student from Western Colorado University works with Nunatak Alternative Energy Solutions’s Donny Davol on a Habitat for Humanity house, using reused solar panels and rails.

December 19, 2023

ACEP research assistant and UAF Ph.D. student Rich Strömberg has been invited to be a panelist at the ’s in March in Denver, Colo.

This event highlights an increasing focus of circular economy issues related to the solar photovoltaic industry. 

A circular economy is a system where materials never become waste –– they are kept in circulation through such processes as maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, recycling and composting.

Strömberg’s interdisciplinary research is focused on reuse of PV systems for social and ecological benefit. Reusing solar equipment fills an important space between currently operating systems and recycling of old equipment to recover constituent raw materials. Continuing to use these components for power generation creates a much greater value than that of the raw materials. It also diverts what would otherwise be waste in a landfill at a time when recycling capacity cannot keep up with the volumes of decommissioned equipment.