Manufacturing

Tongwei has also secured another massive polysilicon order and Golden Glass has invested in more heterojunction solar cell capacity. Furthermore, China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) said 23.7 GW of new solar was deployed in China in the first five months of the year.

Researchers in China have developed a four-junction tandem perovskite/CIGS cell. They claim it is the most efficient device of its kind with an n-i-p structure thus far. They used a novel surface passivation strategy to improve the perovskite cell efficiency and fill factor.

A couple of weeks ago, Goldman Sachs sent shockwaves through battery metals markets, issuing a prediction that cobalt and lithium in particular were due for a sharp price decline in the next two years. But London-based Benchmark Mineral Intelligence is loudly pushing back, outlining its reasons why it believes the call on lithium was wrong. Meanwhile, US analyst Wood Mackenzie says that the battery raw material chain will remain tight, but notes that recycling could help to ease the supply deficit.

Paul Wormser and Christian Roselund of Clean Energy Associates joined pv magazine to discuss the moratorium on solar tariffs and other executive actions taken by the White House.

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory has made a tandem perovskite solar cell that can retain 80% of its original efficiency after 1,500 hours of continuous operation, or more than 62 days. To improve its stability, they used a hole-transporting material made of phenethylammonium iodide and guanidinium thiocyanate.

German VIPV specialist Sono Motors has signed an agreement with French refrigerated vehicle supplier Chereau to develop refrigerated vehicles powered by an integrated solar array. The two companies will build and test a prototype vehicle, and begin to evaluate mass production. Sono estimates that the concept could save around 3,400 liters of fuel and avoid 9 tonnes of CO2 emissions per vehicle, per year.

Azure Power has agreed to invest in a 1.25 GW mono PERC cell and module production facility that Premier Energies plans to open in India.

A research group led by Professor Martin Green has published Version 60 of the Solar cell efficiency tables.

Longi Solar outlines its high-temperature mitigation logic in designing the lower current, high-wattage Hi-MO5 solar panel series.

Japanese scientists have developed a piezoelectric-photovoltaic cell with potential applications in indoor environments. They fabricated it on a flexible polyethylene terephthalate film with sputter-deposited ZnMgO thin film and photo-absorbing selenium as the n-type window layer and p-type layer, respectively.