Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

Each year, the photovoltaic market has been achieving a two-digit growth rate. The resulting economy-of-scale effects are not enough to achieve grid parity on their own. In order to reduce the production costs to grid parity level, new concepts and ideas must be realised as the basis for a photovoltaic factory.

Many readers will equate SEMI with the SEMICON trade shows around the world, business and technical conferences, EHS and advocacy initiatives and, most of all, industry standards. Currently, SEMI has close to 2,000 member companies, about 20% of which are active in the photovoltaic sector. These companies form a community called PV Group. The mission of the PV Group is to serve the photovoltaic market with events, standards and services. Working with other industry groups throughout the world, SEMI is dedicated to advancing the growth and profitability of its members, and to achieve overall cost reduction to enable PV energy adoption worldwide.

Climate change, oil shortage, green energy, energy security – these are some of the global ‘mega’-topics currently dominating the agenda in the news, in politics and in private lives. One of the industries that has most profited from the ever-growing consciousness about the need to de-carbonize current energy use is the photovoltaic industry.

Thin-film solar cell manufacturing is poised to make a giant leap in scale with the birth of the gigawatt fab. Commercial thin-film plants are typically sized based on the capacity of the production line from the chosen equipment supplier. In most cases, initial investments have been for a single line, typically with an output capacity of no more than 60MWp. This period of initial development has allowed the industry to prove the robustness of the technology and capabilities of the equipment, as well as to understand the significance for the cost-per-watt of key cost drivers such as materials reduction, cell efficiency increases, and productivity.

The rapid growth of the solar energy industry owes its success to the development and production of mono- and multicrystalline solar cells. This growth has been limited in recent years due to the lack of available supply of polysilicon, the key raw material for making the wafers that serve as the basis of the solar cell.

Increasing the efficiency and yield of production line processes forms an integral part of PV manufacturers' technology roadmaps. For their next-generation production lines, non-contact processing equipment is considered essential.

Si etch processes are vital steps in Si solar cell manufacturing. They are used for saw damage removal, surface texturing and parasitic junction removal. The next generation of Si solar cells, featuring thinner wafers and passivated rear surfaces, will pose more stringent demands on those steps. Surface decoupling (achieving different surface treatments on the front and the rear) has to be achieved while minimizing Si consumption. Plasma texturing is an emerging technique that appears very promising in that respect, as efficiencies as high as 17.4 % have been achieved on screenprinted multicrystalline Si solar cells incorporating this process.

Standardized requirements for the quality of PV modules, solar cells and wafers are given in the according IEC norms (e.g., IEC 61215, 61646 and IEC 61730 for modules). However, the manufacturers of cells purchasing wafers and the module manufacturers purchasing cells want information beyond the final check of the product and to monitor each step during the production process to identify harsh handling and/or machine faults at the earliest stage possible.

Ever since the introduction of attractive feed-in tariffs for photovoltaic electricity generation, there has been a huge surge in all kinds of photovoltaic applications. Products based on multicrystalline wafers still have the largest market share with thin-film products picking up in recent times. In the course of this process, production technology for waferbased solar cells has been improved.

Thin-film silicon solar cells are a potentially low-cost alternative to solar cells based on bulk silicon that are commonly used in the industry at the present time. However, a major drawback of the current epitaxial semi-industrial screenprinted cells is that they only achieve an efficiency of about 11-12%.

The rapidly-growing photovoltaic market has placed a strong demand on manufacturers to decrease solar cell production costs. For thin-film solar cells, this can be achieved by increasing substrate sizes to achieve a better productivity and by adding more advanced layer stack systems to enhance the solar cell’s efficiency. Nearly all required layers of the prominent thin-film-based solar cell types (a-Si/μc-Si, CdTe and CI(G)S) can be deposited by using plasma processes.

The next two years will be crucial in determining the market viability and future of what many see as the most promising thin-film photovoltaics technology: copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) and its gallium-free cousin, CIS. 

The importance of rapid and accurate measurement of the electrical power output and related characteristics of photovoltaic (PV) modules or panels concluding the manufacturing process cannot be overemphasized. Even though these modules will likely be deployed under a variety of outdoor solar illumination conditions, they must be tested under a set of standard conditions to assure consistency of results demanded by both the manufacturer and the customer.

Solar enterprises will each be faced with the occasional surplus or lack of solar modules in their lifetimes. In these instances, it is useful to adjust these stock levels at short notice, thus creating a spot market.

Design and performance qualification testing of PV modules consists of a set of well-defined accelerated stress tests with strict pass/fail criteria. ASU-PTL is an ISO 17025-accredited testing laboratory and has been providing photovoltaic testing services since 1992. This paper presents a failure analysis on the design qualification testing of both crystalline silicon (c-Si) and thin-film technologies for two consecutive periods: 1997-2005 and 2005-2007.

Every day, mankind consumes as much energy as it took the earth 1,370 years to store. The International Energy Agency estimates that by the year 2030, worldwide electricity consumption will have increased annually by approximately 2.4%.

Today’s PV industry is growing at a rapid rate, but the industry would grow even faster if costs could be reduced for both the final products and the capital investment required for scale-up. One strategy for reducing module costs to reduce the amount of semiconductor material needed (the cost of the silicon solar cells typically comprises more than half of the module cost).

The photovoltaic industry was once, and for quite some time, the unappreciated renewable technology. Perceived as too expensive without subsidies to reduce the price of ownership, and sometimes as an energy choice primarily for environmental zealots, the industry has continued, nonetheless, to grow at a compound annual rate of 34% over the past 30 years.