PV Tech reached its own little milestone of having reported and analysed the R&D spending habits of the same 12 key PV module manufacturers for 10 years. The results have just been published in sister technical journal Photovoltaics International as part of the annual leaders and laggards of R&D spending for 2016.
The significance of PV-Tech’s forthcoming conference in Kuala Lumpur – PV ModuleTech 2017 – has just moved to a new level, with the key company executives from all members of the Silicon Module Super League (SMSL) giving presentations on stage about the quality, reliability, and performance of their solar modules.
Once upon a time, it was relatively easy to verify a PV module manufacturer’s shipment claims and therefore any market share gains or shipment milestone claims as the majority of leading companies were public listed entities.
SPONSORED: Black Silicon offers the solar industry a bright future. Advanced Silicon Group's co-founders Marcie R. Black and William B. Rever, III offer some of their experiences after a decade of research on a material only now being produced at scale.
Dr. Nguyen Tuan, director at the Renewable Energy Centre, Institute of Energy, Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT), Vietnam, discusses the current state of play for solar in Vietnam.
Mitsui & Co., a major Japanese industrial conglomerate, has formed a Joint Venture (JV) with leading India mini-grid developer OMC Power to expand their mini-grid business into Africa. The new JV is part of a ¥1 billion (US$9 million) equity investment by Mitsui in OMC Power.
The big names are out in force at SPI but don't overlook some of the smaller names with big ideas. John Parnell talks to one such company on the showfloor at SPI 2017.
DNV GL has launched the first control hardware in loop (CHIL) test facility for renewable energy generation plants. The facility connects physical power plant controllers to a real-time simulator, allowing the controller to be fully tested and validated without the need for an actual generation facility or power grid. This enables cost-effective, low-risk testing under realistic conditions for all forms of renewable energy control systems.
According to brief reports citing Tesla’s CTO, Panasonic has started making its high-efficiency HIT (Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin layer) solar cells at Gigafactory 2 in RiverBend, Buffalo, New York State.
The PERC (Passivated Emitter Rear Cell) cell and module technology have been widely adopted by the industry. JA Solar has been exploring innovative approaches of bifacial PERC cell and the methods of making it and has been granted two Chinese patents. Also, a series of experiments have been carried out to certify the higher efficiency of bifacial PERC modules than conventional PERC modules.
