Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news
PV Modules
Opinion
Report: SunPower plans to start manufacturing solar PV panels in U.S.
SunPower will produce up to a quarter of its solar panels in the United States in a year or slightly longer from now, according to Reuters. CEO Tom Werner told the audience at the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit that the company "will produce panels in the United States in four or five quarters."
News
Order Focus: Scheuten Solar places follow-on order with Bürkle
As part of its module production expansion plans for 2010, Scheuten Solar has placed a follow-on order with Robert Bürkle for its multiopening Ypsator module lamination tool. The machine will be delivered and commissioned in the second quarter of 2010. According to Bürkle, Scheuten Solar will be able to produce a module every 45 seconds on two Bürkle lines from the middle of this year.
Day4 Energy starts turnaround on back of record fourth quarter revenue
Struggling PV module start-up Day4 Energy saw fourth-quarter revenue reach CDN$36.6 million, an increase of 175% from the prior quarter and 120% increase over the same period in 2008. Full-year revenues for 2009 were CDN$60.0 million, compared to CDN$76.8 million for the prior year. The company was forced to reduce its workforce in early 2009 and shift module production to Jabil in Poland.
China Sunergy acquires two solar module manufacturers
China Sunergy has signed an agreement to acquire 100% of the shares of two related module manufacturers, CEEG (Shanghai) Solar Science & Technology and CEEG (Nan Jing) New Energy.
Order Focus: CNPV signs long-term sales agreement with Sinatis Europe
CNPV Solar Power has entered into a long-term strategic partnership sales agreement with Sinatis Europe, the French project development and distribution company. Under the terms of the contract, CNPV will supply Sinatis Europe with a total of 50MWp of PV modules from 2010 to 2012, which includes 10MWp of scheduled delivery during 2010. The remaining 15MWp and 25MWp are scheduled for delivery in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
Underwriters Laboratories and Atlas team on solar module testing to increase test capacity
Prolonged time frames for weathering testing services for PV modules due to capacity constraints could be easing with the announcement of a strategic alliance between Underwriters Laboratories and Atlas Material Testing Technology. UL currently operates Photovoltaic Centers of Excellence in San Jose, Calif., and Suzhou, China, and will open two new state-of-the-art testing facilities this year: one in Germany and one in Japan. Atlas Weathering Services Group has five laboratories and over 20 outdoor exposure sites around the world in a variety of climates, including desert, subtropical, high-altitude and corrosive.
Order Focus: Solon to supply 90,000 modules nationwide with distributor entrason
Solon has closed a framework agreement for the supply of 90,000 solar modules with the solar distributor entrason, northern Hesse. The contract will run over several years, with an estimated total volume of 20MW for the first year.
Technical Papers
Achievements and challenges in crystalline silicon back-contact module technology
The main goal of the solar industry is to reach grid parity as soon as possible. This can be achieved by reducing the manufacturing costs, by increasing conversion efficiencies and/or by improving the lifetime of solar modules. Driving down the cost of modules is not straightforward. Commercially available PV modules are typically sold with 20-year warranties, and changing these materials for economic reasons requires extensive material testing and recertification of the new module design. In the following sections, we will focus on the cost drivers of module manufacturing processes and how that could evolve into new module designs.
Investigation of the curing reaction of EVA by DSC and DMA
In today's PV modules, the solar cells are commonly encapsulated in EVA. During lamination EVA undergoes a crosslinking reaction. From a practical point of view, two major interests arise. For quality control purposes, one needs to know the degree of curing of the EVA encapsulant after lamination. The focus in process optimization is on understanding the kinetics of the crosslinking as a chemical reaction. If this is known (and proven), one can predict appropriate crosslinking conditions (i.e. lamination temperature and time) that have to be matched to reach a certain degree of crosslinking. This contribution mostly deals with this latter aspect. DSC as well as DMA data and modelfree kinetics were used in this study to establish the kinetics of the EVA crosslinking process. It was found that both techniques adequately predict the degree of crosslinking for any temperature as a function of the curing time.
Product Briefings
New Product: Full spectrum monitoring device from Atlas enables audit test compliance
Product Briefing Outline: To help customers show objective evidence that they are in compliance with test specifications during ISO 17025 quality audits, Atlas now offers the ‘Atlas LS-200’ Full Spectrum Monitoring device. The LS-200 has been specifically designed for use in Ci Series ‘Weather-Ometers’ to precisely measure the SPD output of the xenon lamp. Validation tests have shown that this device has excellent correlation to the spectroradiometers used in the Atlas Calibration Laboratory.
New Product: Pressure compensation seal from Schreiner ProTech protects junction box
Product Briefing Outline: Schreiner ProTech has designed a rugged, self-adhesive Pressure Compensation Seal (PCS), especially designed to provide solar module junction boxes with long-lasting protection against severe environmental conditions, preventing damage to sensitive electrical components. The product has already been selected by KOSTAL Industrie Elektrik to be integrated into their PV modules' junction boxes.
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