Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

A UK-German research team analyzed solar auctions in India between 2014 and 2017 and has determined that local content requirements have driven up PV costs by an average of 6% per kilowatt-hour.

Researchers in South Korea have used the process to increase performance and the replicability of large-area organic cells. The method was used during film formation to speed up solvent evaporation.

Indian and Malaysian scientists have developed a new cooling system featuring an assembled back-channel attached on the rear sides of solar panels, to channel flows of titanium oxide and water. They used a 0.6% nanofluid concentration – the optimum value of nanoparticle concentration in water.

The U.S. utility-scale PV pioneer is going small. After decades of avoiding distributed generation, it is now offering its Series 6 modules for ‘projects and customers of all shapes and sizes.’

Scientists at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) have used intense pulsed light (IPL) processing for the development of a busbarless silicon heterojunction solar cell. ILP processing is roll-to-roll technique for rapid thermal processing of various thin films.

KilowattSol CEO Xavier Daval has criticized the absence of references to solar in the French government’s post-Covid recovery plan, which has allocated €30 billion to the energy transition. The head of the PV technical advisory says solar must become more central to France’s strategic choices and China must not be allowed to retain its near-monopoly on PV panel manufacturing.

Scientists have developed a new micro CIGS cell by using an area-selective electro-deposition process as a material-saving technique. It has a conversion efficiency rate of 5.2% and a high open-circuit voltage.

Jolywood is one of the few PV manufacturers, who has placed its bet on TOPCon technology. Instead of focusing on the simplicity of the production process, Jolywood believes the conversion rate is more critical. With years of efforts, the company has established its leading position among TOPCon players. During the SNEC 2020 in Shanghai, pv magazine had the opportunity to interview Liu Zhifeng, Vice General Manager of Jolywood, and listened to his views on some hot topics, especially the cell tech route.

Polysilicon maker GCL-Poly has started construction of a factory with an annual production capacity of 54,000 MT as Chinese inverter manufacturer Goodwe launched an IPO on the Shanghai stock market.

Researchers in Germany are scaling up efforts to bring perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell technology into industrial scale production. The scientists say manufacturing cells of that kind is possible on widely-available six-inch silicon wafers and modular systems are being designed to do so at scale.