New research undertaken by PV Tech can exclusively reveal that Hanwha Q CELLS is on track to become the leading c-Si cell producer (by MW volume) in 2015. Finlay Colville has the story.
The UK’s former chief scientific advisor Sir David King is one of an eminent group of figures pushing for a new international clean energy R&D programme. He tells Ben Willis how he hopes the Paris climate talks in December will give additional momentum to solar and other renewables as they make the final push towards cost-competitiveness with fossil fuels.
Despite the many headwinds facing Indian PV producers, one firm, Sonali Solar, is planning to ramp capacity over the coming months. Tom Kenning spoke to chief executive and president Pankaj Desai to gain an insight into the challenges facing domestic manufacturers.
In the second blog looking at the top c-Si cell producers, Finlay Colville discusses which technologies they have chosen in order to retain high fab productivity and market competitiveness.
Before 2015, no solar PV cell manufacturer had ever produced more than 3GW of cells in a single calendar year. In fact, very few had exceeded the 2GW level. This year, three companies are poised to manufacture more than 3GW each, with almost 10GW collectively. Not surprisingly, these three c-Si cell manufacturers will occupy the top-3 solar cell production rankings come the end of the year.
When the democratically-elected President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, took office in May this year, the country of 170 million people had just 2.5GW of power capacity. PV Tech spoke to Professor Abubakar Sani Sambo, the chairman of the Nigerian Member Committee, World Energy Council (WEC), who will be speaking at the Solar Energy UK 2015 event in Birmingham this week, about what the outlook is for the solar industry five months into the new premiership of a country with a huge energy deficit.
Korean-based equipment supplier WONIK IPS has developed a turnkey CIGS thin-film technology from previous collaborations with Samsung. WONIK IPS has taken over all of the CIGS technology and IP acquired by Samsung SDI during its intensive and long-running CIGS R&D development phase.
Encapsulation is a key aspect of module durability, yet less effort is made to assess the quality of this process during manfuacture. Christian Honeker describes a new test procedure designed to improve the quality control of lamination and thus promote overall module performance.
Luvata has launched an online solar ribbon calculator called the Sunwire Calculator. The Sunwire Calculator enables photovoltaic module manufacturers to make more informed decisions concerning their solar ribbon needs such as weight, ribbon length per spool and ribbon length per solar panel. ‘Sunwire’ is Luvata’s branded photovoltaic solar ribbon.
HORIBA has developed a Phosphorus Oxychloride (POCl3) delivery systems that is being implemented for atmospheric and low pressure diffusion furnaces in Europe and Asia. The system comprises HORIBA’s advanced bubblers mounted in the diffusion furnace linked to HORIBA’s automatic bulk refill system. More than 120 production furnace tubes are running with the HORIBA system with a further 100 tubes installed before the end of 2015, according to the company.
