A key topic of debate during SNEC 2014 in Shanghai has been the concern over meeting Chinese government targets for distributed generation (DG), which are becoming seen as increasingly over ambitious.
Applied Materials has entered the solar wafer inspection market with ‘Applied Vericell’ system designed to fully-automate in-line wafer inspection to address the quality limitations of manual review, with the capability to automatically predict wafer cell efficiency through photoluminescence (PL) technology. The Vericell system is being introduced at SNEC 2014 in Shanghai, China.
A key conference session at SNEC 2014, the APVIA Solar Leaders Dialogue session, held a day ahead of the start of the main SNEC exhibition, was dominated by past, present and possible future trade wars against and within the PV industry.
PV equipment supplier, Amtech Systems is highlighting two new innovations at SNEC 2014 that include its ‘SPECTRE’ PECVD system after several new order wins for passivation and anti-reflective coating processes using the technology.
centrotherm is highlighting low-pressure diffusion system at SNEC 2014, which it claims can offer up to 40% per wafer for solar cell emitter formation. The cost reductions are attributed to almost a doubling of the systems wafer throughput to more than 140MW per year and overall lower media consumption.
Centrotherm expects the PV manufacturing sector to continue to be focus on both cost pressure and efficiency improvements during SNEC 2014 in Shanghai this week.
PV equipment suppliers, RENA and SoLayTec said they had shipped their 10th ‘InPassion’ system to a tier-1 fully integrated PV manufacturer based in China for monocrystalline solar cells.
Thermal processing equipment specialist, BTU International is introducing its new Stacked Wafer Inline Furnace Technology (SWIFT) on its ‘Meridian’ platform at SNEC, 2014.
According to NPD Solarbuzz, Sharp Corporation shipped the highest volume of PV modules in the world in the first quarter of 2014, something it has been unable to achieve in the last five years.
