hot spots

Heavily-indebted Shunfeng International could be set for another big sell off of solar assets as it tries to pay down a near-$300 million overdue debt pile.

Two new pass/fail protocols are said to be able to separate cells which present high hot-spot possibility, show high current leakage and demonstrate intermediate behavior. The sorting technique relies on a manual solar simulator, an infrared camera and a tool to measure isolation.

A research team from the University of Huddersfield used electron microscopy to analyze micro-cracks in 4,000 polycrystalline silicon solar cell samples. The results showed power losses may vary from 0.9-42.8%, and increased temperatures due to micro-cracking may favor the formation of permanent hot spots in the cells.

A study has estimated the cost of PV project soiling may increase from €3-5 billion last year to €4-7 billion by 2023 due to more extensive deployment in high insolation and soiling-affected regions, such as China and India. The authors of the paper outlined the potential of soiling mitigation technologies while stressing more R&D is needed to reduce costs and for the adoption of such measures on a larger scale.

Jay Lin, CEO of PVGuider discusses why the effects of light induced degradation (LID) in PERC cells cannot be completely eliminated. To explain the difficulty, we first need to understand the LID behavior of the cells, he says.