Featured in Gigawatt club continues to grow – 07-2019

Change to the cast

Few in the industry predicted the speed at which monocrystalline technology would develop, or the impressive cost reductions it would achieve by 2019. This has left producers of multicrystalline products facing rapidly shrinking market share and struggling to compete on a cost per watt basis. Many are now turning to cast mono processes, essentially creating a monocrystalline, or ‘mono-like’ silicon ingot in a multicrystalline furnace, to reach higher efficiencies and extend equipment lifetimes.

By

Mark Hutchins

05 Jul 2019

Image: Canadian Solar

Also sometimes referred to as quasi mono or mono-like, cast mono products first began to appear on PV manufacturers’ technology roadmaps more than 10 years ago. But after an initial wave of interest in the early 2010s was cut down by a lack of suitable processes further down the production line, there was little commercial …

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