Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

Finnish lender Nordea has called in a NOK150 million indemnity loan thought to have been taken out by REC Silicon ASA as a result of the bankruptcy of its Norwegian wafer manufacturing arm seven years ago.

The first part of pv magazine’s review of 2019 considers Q1, when solar early adopter Italy offered an optimistic start to the year by fleshing out its plans for PV but uncertainty still clouded the world’s biggest solar market. The potential for household solar installations to rocket the world over – helped by ever cheaper panels – prompted strategic decisions in the inverter market and analyst expectations were confounded as the cobalt and lithium price plummeted, bringing the EV revolution a big step nearer.

U.S. scientists are trying to understand how non-fullerene small-molecule acceptors (NAFs) increase the efficiency of organic PV devices. They claim that methoxy groups embedded in the acceptors could facilitate an efficiency increase of approximately 6%.

An American research team developed the new formula by applying to bifacial cells the Shockley-Queisser triangle, which is used to calculate the maximum theoretical efficiency of a monofacial solar cell using a single p-n junction technology. According to the group’s findings, the triangle can help to clarify the deeper physical principles of the bifacial technology.

The Chinese manufacturer’s roadmap for its new module technology includes plans to raise panel output to 500 W. The Tiger modules are said to be fully compatible with the company’s existing module encapsulation processes and equipment.

The Swiss technology group plans to concentrate German production in Hohenstein-Ernstthal, in Saxony from the middle of next year. Around 60 employees have been affected by the plant closure. Meyer Burger said it plans to continue offering wafer inspection products in future.

The company’s technology falls into the ‘kerfless’ wafer category: Instead of sawing silicon ingots into wafers, a time-consuming and wasteful process, 1366’s approach forms wafers directly, using molten silicon.

The $483 million fab will be built by an unnamed ‘multinational glass manufacturer’ at the Kota Kinabalu Industrial Park, in the Sabah region.

The chief executive of the Finnish manufacturer – which this month missed another deadline to complete payment for the Lithuanian cell factory it acquired from Solitek – has insisted the €3.5 million convertible bond issue which was today extended by three months will not determine the fate of his company.

A U.S. research team has used machine learning to optimize material composition and predict the design strategies and performance of perovskite solar cells. The researchers analyzed 2,000 peer-reviewed perovskite publications and collected more than 300 data points.