Asia

Scientists in China took a closer look at the role of defects in limiting the performance of perovskite solar cells, demonstrating a screening effect that could be tuned to make material defects “invisible” to charge carriers, greatly improving cell performance. Using this approach they demonstrate a 22% efficient inverted perovskite solar cell, and theorize several new pathways to even higher performance.

The federal government will provide $131 million of soft loans for a $177 million, 100 MW solar park near the Jamuna river in Bangladesh’s Jamalpur district, where a second park of a similar size is being planned by Dhaka and a Chinese partner.

The Chinese poly maker expects to sign off a debt reorganization plan in Bermuda next month and has announced its latest $102 million solar project sell-off.

The world’s number one solar manufacturer said the result has been confirmed by the Institute for Solar Energy Research in Hamelin, Germany.

Gautam Mohanka, managing director of New Delhi-headquartered Gautam Solar, told pv magazine its Haridwar module factory, now scaled up to 250 MW, is producing panels with a power output of up to 400 W, using mono PERC and polycrystalline cells.

Chinese MWT solar module manufacturer Sunport has provided its S1 product for a solar-plus-storage commercial rooftop PV project in Japan. The array is linked to 165 kWh of storage and is equipped with flexible solar panels that weigh 1.3kg each.

The Korean Energy Agency has included PV projects exceeding 20 MW in size for the first time in its solar energy procurement scheme. Selected projects will be awarded a fixed rate under a 20-year contract under the country’s renewable energy certificate (REC) scheme and will sell electricity to local power distributors.

Polysilicon manufacturer Xinte Energy has signed a deal to supply 181,000 tons of poly to module manufacturer JA Solar from next April until December 2026. Anhui-based heterojunction module manufacturer Huasun announced this week that cells produced at its factory in Xuancheng City have achieved a maximum efficiency of 24.39%.

PV manufacturers seeking Indian state funding for new production lines will need to meet minimum scale and module-efficiency requirements, according to new government guidelines.

The solar facility will sell power to the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh under a 20-year PPA.