With his victory in the presidential race, Barack Obama has temporarily silenced critics of his green energy policies. But attacks are now coming from new directions, says Felicity Carus.
The Dow Chemical Company has developed a diamond wire ingot squaring coolant that improves PV wafer manufacturing efficiency while also improving the sustainability of the production process. ENLIGHT DC-8300 is water-based and provides better cutting precision and efficiency.
Mondragon Assembly has launched the new Tabber & Stringer TS 1200 Plus, with a net capacity of 1,300 solar cells soldered per hour. Mondragon believes the new system is one of the fastest and most versatile combined tabber and stringers, available on the market.
With the SamBa series of low-light cameras, Sensovation is able to offer sensitivity in the near-IR range at high speed that enables industrial testing applications such as electroluminescence imaging of solar sells and modules. SamBa Ci is a 2 MPixel, high sensitivity camera optimised for high-throughput EL-based inspection.
Two important reports - one released last month and the other to be released imminently - are really giving the US solar industry something to think about as 2013 approaches.
Vesuvius, which provides an extended range of refractory products used in the manufacturing of thin film and polycrystalline solar panels has introduced the ‘SOLAR Crucible MLC,’ a crucible used for the fusion and the crystallization of polysilicon in the manufacturing of mono-like silicon ingots. The system has been specially engineered to match mono-like special requirements.
The CISARIS oven from Singulus Technologies is an in-line rapid thermal processing equipment, designed for the CIGSSe absorber formation on large area glass substrates. The main features of the CISARIS include a high uptime and mechanical yield, as well as a fast cycle time, which, in combination with the robust selenisation process, lead to a production capacity of over 25 MWp per year.
A thermoplastic encapsulant from Wacker, ‘TECTOSIL’ has proved to offer protection against potential-induced degradation (PID), according to tests carried-out by Photovoltaik-Institut Berlin. The testers confirmed that such modules do not display leakage currents due to PID when using the thermoplastic silicone elastomer sheet in the encapsulation of PV modules.
2012 is likely to be a banner year for installations in the United States, with an estimated 3.2GW to be added by the end of the year to the cumulative capacity of 4GW. By the end of 2016, that figure is predicted to grow to 32GW according to GTM Research.
