Japan

Sharp’s new 375 W solar panels feature multi-wire technology, with a power conversion efficiency of 20.4%.

Scientists in Japan have developed new processes for CIGS solar cell manufacturing, entirely eliminating the use of cadmium and replacing a waste-intensive wet chemical stage. With a thin film deposited on a flexible steel substrate, the group achieved 16.7% efficiency, which it says is a record for a cell of this type produced using scalable fabrication processes.

Scientists in the UK and Japan used the latest imaging techniques to observe the inner workings of a perovskite solar cell at the scale of a few nanometers. Their findings suggest that a single defect is responsible for both limiting initial performance and causing degradation of the cell. By altering chemical compositions and process parameters, the appearance of this defect can be quickly reduced, and the group is confident that its finding could quickly be applied in large-scale processing as well.

In other news, Shinshu University researchers developed a graphene-wrapped molecular-sieving membrane that is reportedly 100 times more efficient than that of conventional polymer separation membranes. Topsoe aalso nnounced the construction of the “world’s largest electrolyzer production facility,” and Toho Gas said it would produce blue hydrogen in Japan for local consumption.

The World Intellectual Property Organization says China accounted for 69% of the patents filed for transport-related fuel-cell tech in 2020, with road transport significantly dominating applications.

Ciel & Terre Japan has deployed a floating solar plant on the swimming pool of a school on the Japanese island of Kyushu. Local developer ELM says the project could be extended to more than 6,000 facilities across the country.

Sharp’s new IEC 61215 and IEC 61730-certified-certified panel features 144 half-cells based on M10 wafers and a 10-busbar design. Its operating temperature coefficient is -0.349% per degree Celsius and its power tolerance reaches up to 5%.

Japan*s Kopel has developed a device with a thickness of just 1.2 mm, with contacts on all of the finger electrodes of busbar-less solar cells.

The facility was built with heterojunction modules and mounting systems provided by German companies Luxor Solar and Next2Sun, respectively. The distance between the panel rows ranges from 8 to 10 meters and the agricultural surface within the rows will be utilized by local livestock farmers as pasture.

In the lawsuit, Maxeon claimed that Canadian Solar infringed its Japan Patent No. JP6642841B2 for shingled solar modules.