Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

An international team of scientists developed a technique to isolate individual sources of electrical ‘noise’ within a solar cell. Comparing the technique to being able to pick out a single voice within a 200-person choir, they say the technique will help to improve understanding of where efficiency losses occur within a cell, and effective ways to mitigate them.

The result was confirmed by Germany’s Institute for Solar Energy Research in Hamelin.

The solar cell was fabricated with a special polymer that is able to passivate defects at the grain boundaries and interfacial surfaces, inhibit nonradiative recombination and charge-transport loss, and improve stabilities under moisture. The device exhibited a remarkable fill factor, of 0.862.

A group of international scientists has compared the hypothetical performance of three novel shapes of solar modules – pyramidal, hexagonal and conical – and has found the latter has the strongest potential in terms of thermal behavior. According to their findings, a cooling technique based on forced airflow is key to making these solar module shapes into a feasible solution.

The Chinese solar glass maker, which claimed a positive legal judgement in the European General Court in 2019, is now likely to have that victory set aside by the European Court of Justice, with an advocate-general saying the company benefited from an income tax regime which may have unfairly distorted its operations.

The PV module relies on Jinko’s TOPCon mono cell technology, for which a record efficiency of 25.25% was announced in late May. TÜV Rheinland has confirmed the result.

At this year’s 2021 SNEC Expo, GCL System Integration, a part of the Golden Concord Group (hereinafter referred to as GCL), launched a series of new module products which echoed the horn of the returning of this old giant. The company suffered a lot on finance in past few years due to subsidy default from central government to its heavy PV plant assets. After a big sale of these PV plants since late 2018 to China state owned energy enterprises, the liabilities and financial costs was cut off greatly and, the company reloaded with no more burden and came back to the frontline again. pv magazine caught up with general manager Thomas Kun Zhang to see what’s in store for GCL going forward.

Saudi scientists have tested several cooling technologies for solar panels and have found that active techniques work better than passive ones under harsh climatic conditions. The most effective one consists of a system based on four heat pipes immersed in a box of liquid, as liquid bulk, integrated with the back of the solar panel.

According to Asia Europe Clean Energy (Solar) Advisory Co. Ltd, demand for solar PV in China could “effortlessly” surpass 100 GW in 2022, following a year of “flat” demand in 2021. It adds that a “massive overcapacity” situation in the production sector is looming. Meanwhile, the distributed solar PV market is on track for huge growth, with potential for annual demand to reach upwards of 20 GW+ from next year.

The Jinko Power unit of the solar manufacturer is planning a huge hybrid solar and wind project and China Energy Engineering is also making, slightly more modest, plans for generation capacity, as poly maker GCL continued its great PV project sell-off.