Leading polysilicon and solar wafer producer GCL-Poly Energy Holdings reported lower revenue and profits than expected in the first half of 2017, primarily due to wafer price erosion, only partially offset by higher wafer production volumes and stable polysilicon prices.
India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has called on domestic solar manufacturers to update information on their installed capacities, operational capacities and annual production.
The PERC (Passivated Emitter Rear Cell) cell and module technology have been widely adopted by the industry. JA Solar has been exploring innovative approaches of bifacial PERC cell and the methods of making it and has been granted two Chinese patents. Also, a series of experiments have been carried out to certify the higher efficiency of bifacial PERC modules than conventional PERC modules.
After two years of tumbling solar tariffs hitting the headlines, the Indian industry is feeling the consequences of its risk-taking for the first time, with a series of reversing market conditions and contract renegotiations sparking serious concern.
PV Tech’s new two-day event PV ModuleTech 2017 – in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 7-8 November 2017 – is set to outline the key issues in new high-efficiency PV modules that will dominate utility-scale solar farms deployment globally over the period 2018-2020.
German-based PV module manufacturer Heckert Solar GmbH said that it had been one of the pioneers using Fraunhofer ISE’s new software that helps reduce cell-to-module losses that have led to module performance gains.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM), and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have reported dual-junction and triple-junction cell efficiency gains.
India has enough tempered solar glass capacity to cater for its own PV manufacturers despite the introduction of anti-dumping duties against certain glass imports from China, according to the Indian firm that originally petitioned for the trade measures.
Indian manufacturer Borosil Glass Works has completed acceptance tests for a major line of 2mm fully-tempered glass, which a company executive claims to be the first such glass produced at this thickness in the world.
As PV Tech recently reported, significantly higher than expected solar PV installations in China is driving global installation forecasts to be revised upwards.
