I saved a ton on solar by making my own panels out of the materials from my neighbor's panels. They must be against recycling, since they seemed awfully upset!

What do you mean by

I’d been pretty skeptical that solar could ever cover its production costs

If you mean EROI, no one should be skeptical about that, unless you are constantly being fed misinformation. Solar panels quickly generate the energy required to produce them, in the worst cases it takes a few years.

And the good thing about solar panels is, they are incredibly durable, once they are put up they just keep on producing energy. Personally, I would argue that as long as not every roof is covered with them, recycling solar panels is bad. Why replace something that is still producing energy (and at that point for free, in EROI terms), when you could leave the old ones up and put the new panels on roofs that have none yet.

Luckily, companies are starting to see that as well, and refurbish solar panels instead of recycling them.

There's a reason it goes reduce -> reuse -> recycle.