Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

US scientists developed a monocrystalline solar panel relying on “minicells” based on polysilicon on silicon oxide passivating contacts. The module works with laser light and can reportedly achieve a photoconversion efficiency of over 40% and an open-circuit voltage of 7 V.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has made highly bifacial perovskite cells with a front-side efficiency of 23%.

French eco-organization Soren, which collects and recycles end-of-life solar panels, has published its 2022 annual report. Last year, more than 10 million solar panels were put on the market in France, up 25% from 2021.

A Chinese-Swiss research group has fabricated a 2D-3D perovskite solar cell with a world-record power conversion efficiency. The cell uses a 2D perovskite layer at the interface between the perovskite and the hole transport layer, which the researchers said can improve charge-carrier transport/extraction while suppressing ion migration.

Norsun and Midsummer have both secured financing to support their capacity expansion plans. Norway’s Norsun plans to raise its polysilicon capacity to 3 GW and Midsummer wants to build a 200 MW module facility in Sweden.

CHN Energy has signed a deal to build 1 GW of offshore floating PV in China’s Shandong province, while JA Solar has announced plans to raise around CNY 9 billion ($1.3 billion) to support capacity expansion.

Researchers in Denmark have analyzed the potential of PV systems and their influence on the underlying farmland in three different agrivoltaic projects, including vertical bifacial optimal tilted, horizontal single-axis tracking, and vertical bifacial setups. They also calculated the potential for agrivoltaic in every region in the European Union and found that the eligible areas are unevenly distributed.

Chinese inverter manufacturer TSUN says its new balcony PV kit consists of one or two 20.7%-efficient solar modules, a 96.7%-efficient microinverter, a bracket, and cables.

Large capacity addition in solar modules by 15-20 players is likely to drive domestic solar glass demand, say CRISIL analysts in an interview with pv magazine. New players have expressed interest to set up solar glass manufacturing in India, however, import duty removal last year on solar tempered glass has put them in a wait-and-see mode.

An international research team has fabricated a heat-driven thermoacoustic heat pump prototype that is claimed to achieve a heating capacity of 5.7 kW and a coefficient of performance of 1.4, with a heating temperature of 300 C and a heat-sink temperature of 55 C. The device uses medium/low-grade heat sources and is purportedly able to offer a complementary solution to the existing domestic heating methods.