Manufacturing

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has announced plans to release US$20 million in funding for solar waste reduction and lifecycle technologies, including US$8 million of funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Module manufacturer Meyer Burger has planned to build a solar cell plant in Colorado, the US, with an initial annual capacity of 2GW.

The Australian government has announced AU$50 million (US$33.7 million) in investment to develop renewable energy supply chains – notably for solar and energy storage – in the Indo-Pacific.

Trina Solar will continue the shift from producing p-type to n-type products, while it aims to base its manufacturing and operations purely on renewable energy by 2030. 

A new steel mill in Temple, Texas will supply steel tubing to solar tracker supplier Array Technologies for use in its deployments at utility-scale PV projects in the US.

Fraunhofer ISE has led research on the world’s most efficient small organic solar cell, with a conversion efficiency of 15.8%

There are currently over 40GW of Chinese-made solar modules in storage across Europe with a cumulative value of around €7 billion (US$7.8 billion), according to data from research firm Rystad Energy.

Terabase has raised US$25 million for its terafab project, which aims to increase the number of automated processes in solar manufacturing.

State-owned Solar Energy Corporation of India has launched a tender for 1GW of domestic solar modules from manufacturers in India.

Bifacial perovskite cells could potentially produce up to 20% more energy yield than their monofacial counterparts, according to experimental research by scientists at the US’ National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).