The testing by NREL, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research laboratory for assessing the performance of photovoltaic (PV) devices, resulted in the highest independently measured efficiency rating for amorphous silicon based cells of any design. The high-efficiency, large-area (1.1 m x 1.3 m) thin-film cell module design is a result of LG Solar's dedicated research and development team.
"Thin-film photovoltaic technology will be a game changer for the solar industry, and today's results show that LG is poised to lead that change," said James Lee, Senior Vice President, Energy Solutions, LG Electronics USA. "We see these results as proof of the professionalism and ingenuity of LG's team of hundreds of engineers that are solely dedicated to research and development in solar technology."
"In collaboration with the photovoltaic R&D team at LG Solar, we conducted laboratory tests on the thin-film cell design using our Spectrolab X-25 Solar Simulator. This test bed is used to measure the 1-sun I-V characteristics of all cells we evaluate. The module was measured under natural sunlight and corrected to standard test conditions," said Keith Emery, Principal Engineer at NREL, which also serves as an independent facility for verifying device performance for the entire PV community. "We are lucky to have at our disposal experienced researchers and state-of-the-art capabilities to solve problems in all phases of material and device development within the industry."
Jason You, Director of the U.S. Solar Business, LG Electronics USA, underscored LG's commitment to technological leadership. "Innovation is at the heart of everything we do here at LG. This is reflected in today's results about future product concepts and also in the new module we're launching this week, which is a 16.8kg cell design with industry leading 18.3 percent module efficiency."
The public release of the NREL test results comes as LG prepares for Solar Power International (SPI; booth 3201), the largest business-to-business solar conference in North America, where LG Solar's U.S. division last year introduced the MonoX module. This year, LG will showcase the third-generation of the MonoX series, the MonoX NeoN, among the lightest in the industry.
LG's thin-film module was stabilized prior to measurement at 1000 hours, 50 C, 1 sun. The technology is expected to reach mass production in late 2013.
