A consortium between Essel Infra, an arm of Indian conglomerate Essel group, and China’s GCL Poly Energy Holdings will start initial site development of a major solar PV manufacturing plant in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh within two months.
French waste giant Veolia has opened the first PV recycling facility in France through a partnership with PV Cycle, a not-for-profit take-back and waste management programme for solar in Europe.
In defiance of a significant trend by a growing number of leading PV manufacturers to either completely replace P-type multi c-Si cell technology with P-type mono c-Si with PERC (Passivated Emitter Rear Contact) technology, or hedge their bets and do PERC on both wafer substrates, Silicon Module Super League member Canadian Solar is placing a potentially risky bet on pushing ahead with the migration to P-type multi c-Si PERC cell technology using diamond wire saw (DWS) and ‘Black Silicon’ texturing under its ‘ONYX’ cell branding.
von Ardenne’s ‘SCALA’ platform has been designed to close the gap between R&D and production of Silicon heterojunction (HJ) solar cells. The modular platform provides a pathway via a technology approach, the tuning of the PVD processing and the complementary technology steps such as texturing, PECVD and metallization processes for 22% conversion efficiencies on 6-inch substrates and thus to ease the path to commercialization.
Silicon Module Super League (SMSL) member JA Solar is continuing to expand manufacturing capacity in 2017 after guiding total shipments to be in the range of 6GW to 6.5GW, up from 5.2GW in 2016.
China-based polysilicon producer Daqo New Energy is responding to the need for higher specification polysilicon demand by increased adoption of high-efficiency mono wafers, notably being required for PERC (Passivated Emitter Rear Contact) solar cells.
Specialist PV manufacturing equipment supplier RENA Technologies has secured several major orders from Asia-based PV cell manufacturers for its alkaline texturing and junction isolation tools in the first quarter of 2017.
Leading PV manufacturing equipment and technology supplier Meyer Burger has recently announced a swathe of new orders that encompass diamond wire saw equipment, PERC upgrade technology and Heterojunction (HJT) cell technology.
DuPont Photovoltaic Solutions is a well-known supplier of specialty materials to the solar energy industry, especially with its ‘Solamet’ photovoltaic metallization pastes that improve cell efficiencies and the ‘Tedlar’ PVF film-based backsheet materials for modules.
