Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

Bluebird Solar, a PV module manufacturer in India, recently unveiled its 600 Wp tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) dual-glass bifacial solar panels. They offer a power conversion efficiency of 23.25%.

Chinese module maker JinkoSolar says a fire broke out at its integrated module manufacturing facility in Taiyuan, China’s Shanxi province. It says the incident could affect its 2024 annual results.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales claim to have identified three TOPCon panel failure types that are absent in PERC products. They explained that these failures may occur when the modules are exposed to high humidity and contaminants before encapsulation.

Scientists in Israel have tested three different PV technologies to power a greenhouse hosting 400 cucumber seedlings. Their analysis has revealed that the PV module cover on the greenhouse’s roof has a “negligible” impact on crop yield, but they also noted that the greenhouse cover’s spectral transmittance and accumulated dust may negatively affect solar module performance.

China Securities has revised its annual guidance for China, predicting up to 280 GW of new PV installations this year, while glass manufacturer Kibing and wafer maker HySolar revealed new solar investment plans.

The German parliament has approved “Solarpaket 1,” a policy package that includes higher feed-in tariffs for commercial and industrial (C&I) solar projects and new measures related to the size of eligible installations in large-scale solar auctions.

OCI has revealed plans to invest $617.9 million to expand production at its Malaysian manufacturing facility from 35,000 to 56,600 metric tons.

German and Swedish researchers calculated the supply of materials to produce perovskite tandem PV at a multi-terawatt-scale, flagging the difficult supply of gold, indium and cesium, well as a need to streamline production of certain materials used for hole-transport layers. “In essence, we might be able to go post-fossil fuels, but we can’t go post-minerals,” the research’s corresponding author, Lukas Wagner, told pv magazine.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, OPIS, a Dow Jones company, offers bite-sized analysis on solar PV module supply and price trends.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory developed a proof of concept for a method to remove polymers from solar panel manufacturing to enable more efficient recycling.