A week after Trina Solar announced it had reached 21.1% efficiency for the industrial production of its monocrystalline PERC solar cells, the Tier-1 Chinese solar company has today revealed it has also pushed the efficiency of its multi-PERC cell to 20.16%.
As with the firms mono-PERC record, this multi-PERC achievement has yet to be verified by a third party, and have only been tested in-house, but Trina is bullish that its achievement coming so soon after last weeks announcement places the company on course for commercial realization of these efficiencies soon.
The 20.16% average efficiency was achieved for Trinas P-type multicrystalline silicon PERC cell under industrially produced standards, the company said. The process utilized Trina Solars new generation of high-performance p-type Trina-1 wafers (T1), which have been independently developed using homogeneous nucleation and black edge free optimized techniques.
Trina Solar achieved this efficiency on 156 x 156 mm2 cells, and the company hopes to produce 60-cell, 286 W modules built with advanced rear passivation technology that integrates Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) a process that delivers better light trapping, thus delivering higher efficiencies.
The companys multi-crystalline silicon P-type double print (DP) cells were also produced using the T1 wafers, achieving a record efficiency of 18.7%.
Trina Solar VP and director of the State Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic Science and Technology, Feng Zhiqiang, spoke of the companys pride at achieving these efficiency advances based on Trinas self-developed T1 wafers based on mass production techniques. "The improvement demonstrates our capabilities in continuously transforming lab technology into production practice as well as leveraging our advantages of vertical integration."
In December last year, Trina Solars chief scientist Pierre Verlinden revealed that the companys R&D team had achieved an efficiency of 21.25% for multi PERC cells, albeit in laboratory conditions.
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