Featured in Top 10 PV trends that defined 2020 – 12-2020

Big, and then bigger

Throughout this year, a fast-moving story has played out in PV module technology, with the introduction of larger wafers and subsequently larger module formats seeing the industry break into two camps, backing either 182 mm or 210 mm wafers. It remains to be seen whether one or the other will become a new industry standard, and both sizes will likely be plentiful on the market for the next few years at least. pv magazine takes a look at how we got to this point.
Image: Longi Solar

It was around the beginning of 2018 that the idea of making PV wafers larger as a cost optimization began to gain ground. Up to this point, the “M2” wafer measuring 156.75 mm had been widely accepted as the industry standard, representing the vast majority of products on the market.As is so often the case …

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