Joining the 300W club, US based PV module manufacturer, Silevo has launched the industry’s first greater than 350 Watt-peak (Wp) solar module made with 72 of Silevo’s proprietary Triex 156mm solar cells.
The company said the development of the high output module was made possible by scaling up Silevo’s Triex solar cell technology to a larger cell substrate of 156mm, compared to 125mm substrates usually used in high efficiency solar cells.
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Cost savings across manufacturing and final installation were touted by the company.
“Integrating solar cells with greater than 21 percent efficiency into industry-standard module sizes helps to enable the next wave of PV system cost reduction,” said Zheng Xu, CEO at Silevo. “Currently, for typical system designers to take advantage of greater than 20 percent efficiency cells, they must redesign the balance of system to accommodate non-standard size technologies. With Silevo’s combination of standard-size form factor and high performance, a designer can use existing BOS components seamlessly while increasing the output power of the system, leading to a significant reduction in overall costs and a greater ROI.”
Silevo has collaborated with SunEdison (formerly MEMC Electronic Materials) to optimize its cell-processing steps to create high-efficiency solar cells that were then packaged into this 355 Wp module.
“We are pleased that our Silvantis™ CCZ wafers have demonstrated higher than 21 percent efficiency for Silevo in their cell process, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration with them to further enhance performance,” said Bang Nguyen, vice president and general manager of SunEdison’s solar wafer business. “Our focus at SunEdison is to reduce the levelized cost of energy for our customers, while providing the best products, services and overall value. We do that by leveraging our more than 50 year history of experience and innovation, demonstrated through the combination of our electronic grade polysilicon, wafer manufacturing expertise and our Silvantis CCZ n-type monocrystalline ingot technology that has tight lifetime and resistance control to optimize cell performance.”
Silevo said that during the first half of 2014 it would have dedicated 156mm cell lines, which will provide greater than 350Wp modules in the marketplace.
