Manufacturing

Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), has opened a new AU$6.8 million (US$4.47 million) printed flexible solar cell facility in Victoria.

Materials science firm Corning has unveiled plans to build a solar wafer manufacturing plant in the US, according to a local news outlet.

The results continue the downward trend in polysilicon manufacturers’ fortunes as the market faces oversupply, cutthroat competition and prices below the cost of production.

At the UK launch of LONGi’s Hi-MO 9 module, PV Tech spoke with the company’s Europe president, Leon Zhang, about his belief that back contact technology represents the future of crystalline silicon PV.

The company attributed this loss to the ongoing decline in the average selling prices of polysilicon and silicon wafer products.

The latest figures from the Silicon Branch of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association showed that polysilicon prices have remained flat.

Trina Solar and FuturaSun were awarded funding in the latest Innovation Fund for a 1.5GW HJT and 1.4GW xBC module assembly plant, respectively.

Sonangol and Qinghai Lihao Clean Energy plan to build a polysilicon plant, which will produce PV modules made of quartz ore, in Angola.

Chinese module manufacturer Trina Solar has achieved a 25.9% cell efficiency for a bifacial i-TOPCON solar cell.

Fierce competition and the emergence of technologies such as TOPCon have led to an uptick in the prevalence of patent infringement lawsuits between PV companies. Tom Kenning reports.