Recently, First Solar provided updates to the market on 2016 company operations, but hidden within the details is potentially a more relevant metric relating to the competitive positioning of their CdTe panels with the main competition in the market today, p-type multi c-Si modules.
Leading cell technologists from all of the big-six Silicon Module Super League (SMSL) suppliers (Canadian Solar, Hanwha Q-Cells, JA Solar, JinkoSolar, Trina Solar and Yingli Green) have now been confirmed as speakers at PV Tech’s inaugural solar cell conference, PVCellTech, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 16-17 March 2016.
November was a bumper month for PV capacity expansion announcements, with the big-six Silicon Module Super League players once again in the headlines, writes Mark Osborne.
PV Nano Cell announced its plans to enter the US solar market with its ‘Sicrys’ silver and copper inks. The inks are expected to accelerate the adoption of solar photovoltaics (PV) by reducing the cost of silicon solar cell production, using an efficient process that produces sustainable inks without the use of hazardous wastes, and by increasing solar cell efficiencies at a mass production scale.
Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE has made a modest, 70-panel installation of new crystalline PV cell and module technologies produced by the institute on the outside of one of its laboratories.
The big-six Silicon Module Super League (SMSL) members face manufacturing pressures over technology migration meaning big advances may not happen in 2016, writes Finlay Colville.
Struggling ‘Silicon Module Super League’ member Yingli Green Energy has missed shipment guidance for the third quarter and will take a non-cash impairment charge of US$581.3 million on long-lived manufacturing assets, due to lower utilisation rates.
