Longi Solar

The pursuit of higher conversion efficiencies is an eternal theme in the PV industry. Among all the links in the chain, cell technology is the most fundamental and decisive element. As we look beyond the established PERC technology, whether heterojunction or TOPCon will become the dominant “next-gen” solar cell among China’s manufacturing giants is emerging as a balancing act between incumbent and upstart, reports Vincent Shaw from Shanghai.

A technology-focused event held by the Africa Solar Industry Association has heard development pipelines across the continent are swiftly changing to accommodate double-sided PV panels, and that’s good news for solar tracker providers too.

Longi has started construction of its 10 GW ingot factory in Yunnan, CLYPG signed PV project contracts for up to 32.6 GW in 2020 and GCL has agreed to sell PV parks with a combined capacity of 321 MW. Polysilicon prices, meanwhile, continue to rise while those of solar glass are falling.

The 275,000 metric tons of annual polysilicon production facilities pushed out of the industry by the expansion of big Chinese producers is more than double the capacity lost in the last great poly market shake-out, between 2010 and 2013.

The Chinese giant, which had a $40 billion stock price yesterday, has announced it shipped 20 GW of solar panels by Monday.

The Korean manufacturer today announced it wants to enforce a ruling made in the regional court of Düsseldorf in June which prohibited rival Jinko Solar from making, selling, importing and distributing products which the court ruled had infringed one of Hanwha’s passivation patents.

Plus, equipment manufacturer Shangji Automation is set to enter the silicon ingot making game with plans for an 8 GW fab, while state-owned developer Panda Green says it plans to add 500 MW of annual project capacity over the next three years.

pv magazine’s Quality Roundtable this year brought together experts from a broad range of applications relevant in the solar industry. The overarching theme this year was quality concerns with new technologies. Experts from companies and research institutes held that the failures that the industry has observed with technologies such as 2P single-axis trackers are not inherent in the technology but can be addressed.

The Düsseldorf Regional Court has agreed rivals of the Korean manufacturer illegally used its patented passivation technology. The judges granted Hanwha Q-Cells an injunction which requires Jinko, REC and Longi to retrieve all modules featuring the patented technology distributed in Germany since late January last year. Hanwha can also opt to have the offending products destroyed.

The Chinese manufacturer this morning said the International Trade Commission had agreed with the initial determination issued by an administrative law judge in April, that Jinko and peers Longi Solar and REC Group had not infringed Hanwha’s solar cell passivation technology.