Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

Gautam Mohanka, managing director of New Delhi-headquartered Gautam Solar, told pv magazine its Haridwar module factory, now scaled up to 250 MW, is producing panels with a power output of up to 400 W, using mono PERC and polycrystalline cells.

Chinese MWT solar module manufacturer Sunport has provided its S1 product for a solar-plus-storage commercial rooftop PV project in Japan. The array is linked to 165 kWh of storage and is equipped with flexible solar panels that weigh 1.3kg each.

The municipal government of Barcelona is supporting the development of a 50-square-meter pilot project to test the feasibility of PV-paving tech.

Scientists in the United States discovered that hydrogen plays a leading role in the formation of defects in a perovskite film, which limit their performance as PV devices. The discovery, according to the researchers, offers further insight into observations already established by trial and error and could help to push the impressive efficiency achievements already made by perovskites even higher.

The document is written to have “universal application” across product lines intended for export to the U.S. market, and is expected to be adopted by equipment manufacturers and U.S. importers.

PV manufacturers seeking Indian state funding for new production lines will need to meet minimum scale and module-efficiency requirements, according to new government guidelines.

The 2021 edition of the International Technology Roadmap for Photovoltaics (ITRPV) was published today by German engineering association VDMA. The report, which forecasts technology trends across the solar industry, expects PERC to maintain its position as the dominant cell technology and notes that large wafer formats are here to stay.

Sunowe’s trial over allegations of PV module smuggling is expected to resume on May 4. The company has been accused of not paying €20 million in anti-dumping and anti-subsidy tariffs.

Researchers in Germany claim to have overcome the main challenge for the development of large-area perovskite PV modules – scaling up from the cell to the module level. They achieved an efficiency of up to 16.6% on a module surface of ​​more than 50 centimeters squared, and 18% on a module with an area of 4 centimeters squared.

The solar module will be available in three versions – white, black, and glass-glass. The products have an output of up to 400 W, but when the bifacial effect is optimally used, the output of the glass-glass module can reach up to 430 W. Both the white and black modules weigh less than 20 kg