Research

Qatari researchers have looked at the degree to which cleaning robots could threaten the physical integrity of solar panels. They found that cleaning machines have a very minimal impact and that modules of similar sizes tend to exhibit roughly the same amount of vibration.

Chinese researchers have developed a new passivation technique for shingled solar panels based on tunnel oxide passivated contacts (TOPCon) or heterojunction (HJT) tech. It reduces recombination losses in the cell-to-module process and reportedly increases open-circuit voltage, fill factor, and efficiency.

Canadian scientists have developed a new way to measure the energy yield of bifacial PV systems. They said they considered the spectral albedo of ground cover like snow and sand to predict energy gains of up to 2%, in comparison with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard.

Japan’s Shintora Kosan has developed a novel water jet technology to recover glass from end-of-life PV modules. It says it can pulverize the solar cells and the backsheets without damaging the glass.

South Korean scientists have developed a way to determine when a floating PV system is safe to install in the field.

A US research team has developed a cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cell through a lift-off method that reportedly ensures higher crystallinity of the cadmium sulfide film. The device has a power conversion efficiency of 12.60%, an open-circuit voltage of 0.829 V, a short-circuit current density of 23.64 mA/cm2, and a fill factor of 64.30%.

The future outlook for copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells is bright, due to recent R&D achievements and efficiency gains, according to Ayodhya Tiwari, head of laboratory at Switzerland’s Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA). CIGS has already shown its value in building-integrated PV applications, but as production volumes increase in the years ahead, ground-mount plants and big utility-scale installations could also become feasible, says Tiwari.

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has achieved remarkable efficiency and stability for a wide-bandgap all-perovskite tandem solar cell. The scientist developed the device with an inverted architecture and used gas quenching instead of an antisolvent in the manufacturing process.

Alessandro Romeo, associate professor in experimental physics at Università degli studi di Verona, speaks to pv magazine about the advantages of cadmium-telluride (CdTe) solar cells over other thin-film PV technologies, as well as the commercial implications of future efficiency gains and the prospects for industrial expansion.

French research institute CEA-INES has produced a 566 W heterojunction (HJT) demonstrator PV panel using Norwegian silicon wafers based on German polysilicon and solar cells made in France. The prototype has a carbon footprint of 317 kgCO2eq/kW, which is considerably lower than the maximum 800 kgCO2eq/kW standard for Chinese products.