Featured in Racing towards high performance – 06-2019

One side or two

Bifacial modules are here to stay. But even as manufacturers commit further capacities to two-sided module production spanning a whole range of technologies, there are still challenges to overcome, to fulfill predictions that bifacial will represent almost 40% of all modules produced inside the next decade. Flash testing conducted at the end of cell and module production presents one of these, and there is plenty of debate among equipment suppliers as to how this manufacturing stage should treat bifacial cells and modules.

By

Mark Hutchins

04 Jun 2019

Upcoming standards to be published by the IEC specify that front side flashing alone can provide accurate characterization of cells, provided an applicable reference module is used, and process variation is kept to less than 5%. | Image: Meyer Burger

The performance boost provided by bifacial is dependent on a range of factors that can vary enormously between installations – the color of the ground, as well as the height and pitch of the modules. Typically, the boost is described as ‘between a 5% and 30% increase in output.’ But investors and project owners want …

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