Wang Shuo, the senior engineer at China Renewable Energy Engineering Institute, discusses the future development trend of photovoltaic battery technology. He said n-type technologies offer higher performance and better long-term reliability, as challenges in its large-scale production are overcome by leading companies, yield rate and costs for the two come is closer to parity, the shifting pace is speeding up just like what had happened on PERC boost three years ago.
Derek Zhao – the senior analyst at PV InfoLink, is in line with the above expert’s view that 2022 unveils the end of the P-type era and the start of the N-type era. He shared forecasts for the development of TOPCon technology in the coming years and took a closer look at some of the technological developments allowing this, which comes with big expectations for product performance, manufacturing capacity, and market share. As the date of December 31, 2021, the total planned capacity of Topcon was 130GW, among which 50GW will be rolled off by end of 2022. Yield rate and the cost is the future competitiveness for manufacturers.
Hui Xing, the chief engineer at the Northwest Institute of Engineering Investigation and Design, explained the increasingly costly land is one of the drivers to include n-type Topcon technology to be preferred and considered in the design of pipeline projects. PERC conversion efficiency is close to the limit, leaving almost no room to improve. In order to maximize the land space to generate more power per square meter, developers and EPC must once again seek technological breakthroughs. She illustrated a comparative study between PERC bifacial and Topcon bifacial for a 100MW utility project in the northwest of China, with irradiation of about 1436kWh/㎡. Modules are 2*13 vertical installed, 2.5 meters high above the ground. The result has shown N-type Topcon solution has a 2.0%-4.5% yield gain against PERC bifacial.
