Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

M10 Solar Equipment, a German joint venture, may have shown Europe’s solar manufacturers how to scale their gigafactories by using Siemens’ plant simulation software to ramp up production of its innovative shingled-matrix solar cell production equipment, explains Tobias Wachtmann, director of global glass and solar for Siemens.

The Dutch province of North Brabant will deploy a 500-meter-long solar bike line and test its performance over a 5-year period. The PV system will be integrated into the asphalt top layer and will consist of 600 solar panels of an unspecified type.

A UK research group has fabricated perovskite solar cells that can harvest energy from near-ultraviolet (UV-A) indoor LED lights. The devices achieved an efficiency of 26.19%, an open-circuit voltage of 0.90V, a short-circuit current of 1.42 mA/cm2, and a fill factor of 77.56%, resulting in a maximum power output of 991.21 μW/cm2.

China’s DAH Solar has added a specially designed microinverter to its Full-screen module, making the ‘SolarUnit’ a formidable offering for the rooftop PV segment. DAH Solar President Shenheng Xie took pv magazine through some of the system’s key features and the advantages they promise once installed.

Kaneka said the cells will be utilized in the roof glass of Toyota’s Prius PHEV electric car. It plans to begin full-scale delivery of in-vehicle PV products this year.

Between 2025 and 2029, the investment company of the Swedish furniture group will purchase solar modules produced in the US by the Swiss photovoltaic manufacturer. The agreement is the basis for Meyer Burger to increase annual production capacity at its Arizona site to around 2 GW.

In its latest monthly column for pv magazine, the International Renewable Energy Agency shares a series of recommendations gathered from sector experts to help India reach its ambitious solar targets. According to its experts, Quality Infrastructure (QI) will be crucial for the country’s PV market in the years to come. QI is an interdependent ecosystem of the different elements (accreditation, certification, standards, testing, metrology, inspection & monitoring) working together in harmony, and all associated services should be developed in unity and not in a piecemeal fashion. A sound and internationally harmonized QI not only ensures that PV products and services deliver as expected by customers and national energy authorities, but also enables more efficient and competitive markets based on a global economy on scale.

An international research team has presented all possible system designs and applications for photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) technology. Their review includes conventional PV-T collectors, air-based systems, liquid-based installations, water-based collectors, refrigerant-based systems, heat-pipe-based technologies, dual air-water systems, building-integrated PVT arrays, and concentrated PVT collectors.

Researchers in China have built a hole transport layer with a mixed binary configuration integrating the polymer Regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and Spiro-OMeTAD. They used it to build a perovskite solar cell that was able to retain 90% of its initial efficiency after 1,200 hours of storage in dark ambient environment.

The Renewable Energy Test Center (RETC) raised the issue of ultraviolet-induced degradation of the trending technology in its PV Module Index 2022.