PC/ASA Plastic Solar Panel Frames

General

Solar panel frames don’t tend to generate a lot of excitement, but they play an important role: providing a panel strength, protection and fixing points. Frames need to be strong, lightweight and able to endure the elements for decades. To this point, aluminium has been the most widely used material.

This new PC/ASA material is a composite thermoplastic made up of Acrylonitrile Styrene Acrylate (ASA) and polycarbonate (PC), both of which are petrochemical (oil) based. It has aluminium’s durability, is half the weight, has flame retardant attributes, low thermal expansion and is price-competitive with aluminium.

While an aluminium frame only makes up around 10% of a solar panel’s weight – around 2kg – any weight reduction will probably be welcomed by installers who have to tussle with solar panels on rooftops all day – not the safest of tasks given the generally unwieldy nature of PV modules.

Plastic Solar Panel Frame Recycling

One of the many benefits of aluminium is it can be recycled and doesn’t lose any quality during that process – it can be recycled pretty much forever.

The good news for the PC/ASA is it is possible to recycle PC/ASA material blends – although this study indicates compared to virgin PC/ASA, a loss in impact strength occurs. But it notes:

“Quality improvement in compounding or blending with virgin PC/ASA may be used to compensate these quality losses and establish a closed-loop recycling system.”