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Q-Cells SE’s start-up subsidiary Sontor GmbH has said that it produced and sold a total of 3.6MW in 2008. The production ramp has already started at its Thalheim, Germany plant, which has a nominal capacity of 24MW. Module efficiency of its a-Si/µc-Si thin film ‘micromorph’ modules (1.8 square metre) are said to be stable at up to 8% conversion efficiency.
"That's an excellent start and a very good basis for further development of our technology", says Torsten Brammer, Chief Technology Officer of Sontor (pictured). "The production process is developing equally well, looking at throughput and uptime", adds Patrick Mergell, Chief Operations Officer of Sontor.
At cell level, Sontor is claiming stable values of up to 9.3% efficiency on the active surface, while the ramp has continued.
In November, 2008, Sontor received certification according to DIN EN ISO 9001: 2000 and DIN EN ISO 14001: 2004. All tests and production controls for certification of modules have now been completed. Sontor said that it had recently received a pre-confirmation of the successful certification of the SN2 module according to IEC 61646 ed.2, IEC 61730-1 and IEC 61730-2.
The thin-film start-up has had one major successful project completed in 2008, which used 1.6MW of panels for a solar park in the Deggendorf district of Lower Bavaria.
Sontor plans to better utilize its production plant in 2009 and continue R&D developments.
