Features

Editors' Blog, Features
February 28, 2012
By Felicity Carus
Plunging PV prices have brought the world closer to grid parity than ever before as solar developers scramble to undercut each other with bargain prices bid into California's Renewable Portfolio Standard.
Editors' Blog, Features
February 22, 2012
By Felicity Carus
Concern about copper prices is not a recent phenomenon in the history of electrical generation and delivery. In 1879, Thomas Edison calculated that he would need to spend $18,000 to test his first ever electric light system around his lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
Features, Product Reviews
February 13, 2012
By Mark Osborne
Amphenol Industrial is offering a new active trunk and drop cabling solution, in conjunction with Ampt, a designer of active electronics for photovoltaic (PV) solar modules. The new cabling solution is claimed to reduce the cost of commercial and utility-scale PV systems.
Features, Product Reviews
February 13, 2012
By Mark Osborne
GT Advanced Technologies has developed the ‘Acuity’ software, as a comprehensive performance management solution that lets operators optimize the performance of GT’s ‘DSS’ family of crystal growth furnaces. Acuity performance software monitors DSS production data providing PV manufacturers with real-time insight into actual versus ideal equipment performance. By understanding these performance gaps, companies can make more informed decisions to ensure that DSS furnaces perform at optimal levels of efficiency run after run.
Features, Product Reviews
February 9, 2012
By Mark Osborne
Plansee High Performance Materials has added MoNa sputtering targets with high purity and a uniform and fine-grained microstructure to its product offering. Tests in cooperation with the Swiss EMPA institute have claimed the MoNa targets to be superior to alternative targets. Using Na-doped molybdenum layers, the efficiency of CIGS solar cells are said to have been significantly improved.
Features, Product Reviews
February 8, 2012
By Mark Osborne
Rainwise has recently released the PVmet Solar Energy Efficiency Monitor, a weather station specifically designed to improve accurate monitoring of PV plant performance parameters. The monitoring system is said to be the first weather station to be recognized by SunSpec Alliance for compatibility with industry plant management systems and has already sold 500 units to 2 of the top inverter manufacturers worldwide.
Editors' Blog, Features
February 8, 2012
By Felicity Carus
2011 was hardly a vintage year for thin-film solar in the US. Doubts about revenue-ready technologies based on copper, indium, gallium and selenide coalesced around the Solyndra bankruptcy in August. In December, First Solar decided it could not replicate its success in cadmium telluride, and shuttered its CIGS division.
Features, Product Reviews
February 6, 2012
By Mark Osborne
PSE has introduced its new mechanical load test stand for the more realistic and comprehensive determination of mechanical stress from wind and snow loads.
Features, Guest Blog
February 6, 2012
By Finlay Colville
Increasing panel efficiencies and power ratings represents a key deliverable from the PV industry today. These requirements are not simply long-term objectives for the industry as a whole: they are essential at the company level to differentiate leading suppliers within an overcrowded and highly competitive manufacturing environment. Efficiency enhancements typically require changes in manufacturing process flow and materials (raw and consumable) used in production. Ideally, the technologies that drive these changes will be those featured within a technology roadmap.
Features, Product Reviews
January 31, 2012
By Mark Osborne
Vitronic’s VINSPECsolar electroluminescence inspection system is designed to detect defects within solar cells that could influence electrical performance of the solar module. By using electroluminescence inspection, all defect areas are automatically detected, displayed and classified by relevant software before lamination, so that reworking can increase the module's efficiency. Archived electroluminescence images of the finished module also serve as proof of the delivered quality.

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