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Solland Solar has sold its Sunweb Metal Wrap Through cell manufacturing operations in The Netherlands to Pufin Group for an undisclosed sum. Solland Solar will focus on its Sunweb module development and further develop its PV systems solutions business. Schott Solar also contributed to the development of the Sunweb modules.
The 38th IEEE Photovoltaics Specialists Conference (PVSC), June 3 – 8, 2012 in Austin, Texas, will be opening its registration on December 26. The event will begin with Austin Solar Day on June 3, 2012 while the remainder of the event will focus on ten technical areas including, fundamentals and new concepts for future technologies, thin-film polycrystalline photovoltaics, III-V and concentrator technologies, crystalline silicon photovoltaics, thin-film silicon-based technologies, OPV, space technologies, characterization methods, PV modules and terrestrial systems and a PV velocity forum.
JA Solar Holdings revealed that its Maple solar cells had reached an 18.5% conversion efficiency level in large volume production, with the average conversion efficiency for the Maple cells in mass production being recorded at 18%. The new record for JA Solar is noted as being higher than the industry’s standard average conversion efficiency for multicrystalline solar cells of nearly 16.8%.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has given an exclusive patent licence to equipment specialist, Natcore Technology to use its diffused emitter technology ‘Black Silicon’ with Natcore’s liquid phase deposition (LPD) technology. The black silicon process has been claimed by Natcore scientists and NREL researchers to reduce average reflectivity to less than 1.5%, compared to current advanced antireflective coatings that are said to reduce the average reflectivity to approximately 6%. The aim is to commercialize the technology in 2012.
centrotherm SiTec, a subsidiary of centrotherm photovoltaics said that it had received Final Acceptance Test (FAT) from Shaanxi Tianhong Silicon Industrial Corporation (STSIC) of a turnkey 1,250MT polysilicon plant. centrotherm SiTec was also in the in process of commissioning a second polysilicon expansion at STSIC that would take capacity to 3,000MT using state-of-the-art 24-pair reactor technology, according to the company.
Two years of hard work has culminated in the development of a prototype for a next generation solar PV device. It will be submitted to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in early 2012 for certification. The NGD technology uses a novel approach combining a barrier oxide layer with a patent-pending absorber layer, replacing the traditional semiconductor layer used in crystalline silicon and thin-film PV.
Advanced thermal processing equipment specialist, BTU International has said it had successfully completed a tool marathon test at a customer site for its ‘TRITAN’ HV90 dual-lane metallization firing system. The marathon test involved processing in excess of 60 million cells.
Using standard production processes but with inclusion of copper electroplating, replacing silver-screen printing techniques, Schott Solar has achieved an efficiency of almost 20%. Using PERC (Passivated Emitter and Rear Contact) techniques combined with previous developments using nickel-copper plating on the front side of a multicrystalline cell, 19.7% efficiencies were achieved and verified by Fraunhofer ISE last week.
Roth & Rau’s has recently improved the cell efficiency on their heterojunction solar cells (HJT) to 21% efficiency on 156mm wafers. Presented at the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition in Hamburg at the beginning of September this year, Roth & Rau achieved the first silicon heterojunction cell on 6 inch wafers at an efficiency rating of 20%. This result was later independently confirmed at Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE).
According to Bloomberg, JA Solar Holdings advised that it had issued 30.9 million ordinary shares in order to buy Chinese monocrystalline wafer supplier Solar Silicon Valley Electronic Science and Technology. The company cited that the increase in capacity would not only lead to a larger wafer capacity, but help it cut costs and improve profitability.
