Highlights

Radovan Kopecek, the co-founder and director of Germany’s ISC Konstanz, says interdigitated back contact (IBC) tech could account for half of the global market for solar modules by 2030. He says IBC will start to dominate once TopCON and HJT get stuck at certain efficiency limits, and he believes TOPCon will be the first victim.

Chinese module maker JinkoSolar has released three new TOPCon solar panel variants, ranging in power from 445 W to 635 W. The most efficient modules have a rating of 23.23%. The bifacial factor is up to 85% across the three panel types, with a temperature coefficient of -0.29% C.

Schneider Electric’s new Schneider Home platform includes a smartphone app to monitor and allocate energy resources.

The Spanish authorities have allocated €150 million ($161 million) to a new energy storage program.

A US research team has developed a new technique to produce hydrogen from sunlight and water. It works in an indoor environment and uses pure water, concentrated solar light, and an indium gallium nitride photocatalyst.

Austria joined the gigawatt club last year after deploying more than 1,000 MW of solar for the first time. It has now reached more than 4.2 GW of cumulative installed PV capacity.

Bonna Newman, program manager at TNO, speaks to pv magazine about the road forward for vehicle-integrated PV, which will likely remain a niche over the short term, despite recent industrial developments. Several companies have started production, but high-volume output and the potential of other PV technologies beyond crystalline silicon remain key challenges for the future of vehicle-integrated solar.

Jochen Rentsch, head of department at Fraunhofer ISE, speaks to pv magazine about recent progress in TOPCon module development, including new efficiency records by JinkoSolar and Jolywood. Production costs are falling as more Tier 1 companies shift from PERC to TOPCon, and multi-gigawatt production is already a reality. Could the TOPCon solar cell segment reach a tipping point for efficiency in 2023?

The Portuguese authorities plan to award 10-year contracts to developers for 3,000 tons of green hydrogen and 10,000 tons of renewable methane.

Sakura Yamasaki, the founder and CEO of Singapore Solar Exchange, speaks to pv magazine about China’s recent decision to launch the trading of industrial silicon futures, following a year of high polysilicon prices. Yamasaki discusses the potential impact on polysilicon prices in China, the outlook for domestic price stabilization and risk mitigation, and what this might mean for the global solar industry in 2023.