Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

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.

A spinoff of Germany’s Fraunhofer Gesellschaft has developed a compact vehicle-integrated PV system integrated with medical support equipment to provide off-grid, off-road mobile healthcare in rural communities. The PV modules with integrated energy management system supply all the electricity required for maintaining a cold chain for vaccines, medicines and samples.

Datang has kicked off the procurement process for 16 GW of solar modules, including 13 GW of tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) panels, 2 GW of passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC) modules, and 1 GW of heterojunction products.

Developed by a research group in China, the two-terminal all-perovskite tandem device utilizes a 23.11%-efficient single-junction top cell relying on an optimized Sn-Pb perovskite material. The perovskite-perovskite cell was also able to retain 95.7% of the initial efficiency after being stored in a glovebox for 2,200 h.

India’s Shirdi Sai Electricals says it plans to install 10 GW of ingot-to-solar module production capacity and manufacture solar glass by March 31, 2026.