The Institute for Sustainable Energy received a donation of more than 140 PV panels from Eden Leisure group. These panels had been installed at Eden Leisure group鈥檚 office for more than eight years but they still have around 20 more years of useful lifetime.
This is a very good sustainability practice of recycling PV panels because the panels will be used for the rest of their useful lifetime. Over their lifetime these panels will generate over 55,000kWh of electricity every year, therefore, that is equivalent to about 35 tonnes of CO2 avoided! This will cover most or all of the Institute's energy needs and they will be installed in the coming months.
The Institute is situated in Marsaxlokk, it was refurbished seven years ago and today it is a state of the art centre of excellence dedicated towards photovoltaic research. At the ISE students and academic staff focus on analysing the use of energy, determining feasible measures to conserve energy and apply renewable sources of energy.
Prof Luciano Mule Stagno, Director at the Institute for sustainable energy said that "This is an excellent sustainable initiative as while these panels are a few years old, they will still work for decades and require no new use of energy or resources as is the case for new panels. The mantra of sustainability is reduce, reuse, recycle, in that order. This is a good example of re-use."
