Fraunhofer ISE

The cell uses a novel approach that increases its conversion efficiency and longevity at the same time. Researchers claim it is a new world record for this type of application and highlight its importance in storing renewable energy in hydrogen to compensate for output and demand fluctuations.

Underlining India’s commitment to becoming the global renewable energy leader, Shri Anand Kumar, Secretary of India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, said the country plans 500 GW of capacity by 2030. He also underlined India’s plans for becoming a solar and storage manufacturing hub; and said the International Solar Alliance needs to widen its membership.

The utilization rate of materials and energy in Nexwafe’s kerfless wafer production processes is said to be almost 100%, at a time when price pressures on solar modules are expected to get significantly heavier in the immediate future.

The new inverter was developed in the HV-SiC project under the Future Electricity Grids funding program financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The inverter can regulate power currents of up to 10-15 kV more than ten times higher than regular silicon inverters. Fraunhofer says this makes new system architectures for power grids and plants conceivable.

Together with Austrian equipment manufacturer EVG, Fraunhofer ISE has achieved an efficiency of 33.3% on a multi-junction solar cell. The highlight of the cell is the ultra-thin II-V semiconductor layer. However, it will be a few years before mass production is possible.

NexWafe GmbH has completed €8 million (around US$9.4 million) in financing for the next stage of its kerfless wafer manufacturing plans. The company sees big market potential for the product, which projects cost reductions of 50%.

The German research institute said this new result has beaten its own world record, which it set in Februrary reaching a 21.9% efficiency.

According to analysis from Fraunhofer ISE, PV was almost on par with nuclear power in Germany in the previous month. PV systems installed in Germany generated the record volume of 5.57 terawatt hours.

Swiss equipment provider INDEOtec announced that it has received an order for its OCTOPUS II PECVD system from the renowned Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) in Germany.

Researchers from NREL, Fraunhofer ISE and Japan’s AIST have released a new paper which looks at the barriers to deploying multiple terawatts of solar PV and what can be done to overcome them.