PV manufacturing equipment specialist M10 Industries said its new ‘Kubus MTS 5000’ stringer tool has been installed and commissioned at Emmvee's Bangalore module assembly plant, providing a 340MW increase in capacity at its existing facility.
According to PV Tech’s ongoing monitoring of global PV manufacturing capacity announcements, India-based Emmvee planned a 350MW module assembly capacity expansion that was announced in December, 2015.
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M10 Industries noted that Emmvee had originally sought to move to a larger facility to accommodate the expansion, instead with the launch of M10 Industries new high-throughput stringer in a compact footprint, Emmvee was able to add the capacity at its existing site in Bangalore.
Srinath T., Emmvee Group's technical director said, “The new Kubus stringer which can sol-der high volume solar cells in a smaller foot print has helped us to expand our capacity in the existing facility.”
M10 Industries said that Emmvee was the first customer in India to use the new Kubus soldering machine, which has a claimed uninterrupted production with a flow rate of 5,000 cells an hour.
The equipment supplier also carried out tests with Emmvee at its SI Module technology and service centre on the M10 Solar Campus in Freiburg, Germany, which included throughput and various different materials specific to production materials used by Emmvee.
“Emmvee has always been in the forefront in adapting new technology. The acquisition of the Kubus stringer with latest soldering technology will help us to achieve greater heights in solar module production,” added Manjunatha D. V., Managing Director and Founder of the Emmvee Group.
According to M10 Industries the preparation work led to the successful commissioning, which included a stress test. The two stringers installed to meet Emmvee’s capacity expansion requirements were said to have entered production in the middle of January 2017.
“Our Kubus stringer can finally show what it is really made of. We achieved the promised 5,000 cells per hour and the system availability during the 72-hour stress test was measured at 98 percent,” noted Gregor Reddemann, CEO of M10 Industries AG. “Similar stringers achieve significantly less with around 85 percent actual production time.”
The company said that the yield proved to be more than 99.85%, with measured cell breakage rate at only 0.014%.
As PV Tech recently reported, capacity expansion plans in India outpaced China for the first time during 2016. However, there had been more than 24GW of combined cell and module capacity expansion plans announced in India since 2014, while the execution from plans to actual production had been limited.
However, momentum is starting to build with planned expansions announced in 2014, 2015 and 2016 starting to turn into effective capacity.