Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

Building a domestic solar panel manufacturing industry based on Australian innovation could generate up to 60,000 jobs and help cement the nation’s future as a renewable energy superpower. However, access to capital and focused policies are essential if manufacturers are to reach scale where they can be internationally cost-competitive.

Chinese manufacturer Jolywood is currently applying a laser-assisted firing process in TOPCon solar cell manufacturing that can reportedly increase contact quality and corrosion resistance, while also reducing production costs. Scientists at the University of South Wales have investigated the impact of this production process on the quality of TOPCon cells and have found it “significantly” improve their reliability.

Seraphim says it will build a new 10 GW solar panel factory in two phases in Guangzhou, with an investment of CNY 6 billion ($829.6 million), while JA Solar has announced plans to construct a 5 GW panel factory in Inner Mongolia.

Import duties and domestic incentives continue to shape the Turkish solar market. Despite protectionism, there was a significant Chinese presence at the SolarEX trade fair as new manufacturers rely on Asian resources.

Greenrail Group has started deploying special its PV railroad-tie solution along a railway line in Emilia Romagna, Italy. The company designed the system according to the UNI 10349 standard.

The photovoltaic micro aerial vehicle has a footprint of 0.15 m x 0.15 m and a weight of only 0.071 kg. According to its creators, it is the smallest solar-rechargeable multi-rotor ever developed to date. It uses a 22.6%-efficient solar module technology from US-based Sunpower and a 0.3 Ah storage system based on lithium polymer batteries.

A German research team has investigated the optical properties of perovskite/perovskite/silicon triple-junction cells and has found these devices may have a practical efficiency potential of 44.3% assuming idealized electrical parameters. These cells may also potentially achieve a fill factor of 90.1%.

Chinese manufacturer Longi says that its new wafers offer a notable efficiency boost of approximately 0.1% across various cell technologies.

Developed by an international research team, the proposed methodology can reportedly be used with all kinds of solar panels and under different environment conditions. It relies uniquely on the specifications of the modules’ datasheet, temperature and insolation intensity.

A UK-Saudi research group has investigated the impact of uneven soiling on PV modules and has found that it can lead to enhanced performance losses due to different operational effects at intra-cell level. The academics conducted a series of experiments on a residential rooftop in Muscat, Oman, throughout 2021.