Combined R&D expenditures of 12 major PV module manufacturers in 2016, tracked since 2007, decline by approximately 4.4% in 2016 to US$519.3 million (see Figure 1), compared to US$542.9 million in 2015.
As always we have a selection of technical papers from some of the industry’s leading minds. Radovan Kopecek and Joris Libal from ISC Konstanz tackle one of the biggest issues impeding the rollout of bifacial cell and modules, how to standardise their measurement. As long as there is no commercially available means to measure their gain, bifacial modules will struggle to improve their market penetration.
The materials section includes an excellent paper from Fraunhofer THM examining the optimization of diamond wire sawing. The method is becoming increasingly predominant with some equipment manufacturers shelving their slurrybased tools. Here Fraunhofer assesses how to squeeze even more efficiency out of diamond wire saws.
CSEM meanwhile explores the required metallization and interconnection process changes required to enable a production-scale shift to silicon heterojunction PV.
Mark Osborne provides his latest capacity expansion report as upgrades to higher efficiency lines continue to drive planned investments.
Today, silicon solar cells are still produced in almost equal shares from mono- and multi-crystalline silicon wafers. The authors here look at the scope for efficiencies in the wire sawing process for multi-crystalline silicon.
Thin-film solar cells based on chalcopyrite semiconductor Cu(In,Ga) (S,Se)2 compound (hereafter called CIGS or CIGSeS irrespective of the exact composition) have continuously drawn interest because of their progressively increasing high photovoltaic conversion efficiencies and the merits of long-term performance stability, high energy yield, low cost production potentials and other advantages for industrial manufacturing and application of solar.
The drive towards better Si utilization (g/Wp) has been an obsession in the Si PV industry over the last few decades as one of the key aspects in making photovoltaic energy production competitive. With the cost of Si still making up a third of the final Si solar module cost, there is continued interest in reducing the cost of Si by producing thinner wafers and reducing kerf losses.
Combined R&D expenditures of 12 major PV module manufacturers in 2016, tracked since 2007, decline by approximately 4.4% in 2016 to US$519.3 million, compared to US$542.9 million in 2015. As 2015 expenditures were a new record high, 2016 becomes the second highest year of spending and 2014 the third highest. All three years highlight total combined annual R&D expenditures above US$500 million.
Since the first demonstration by Sanyo in the 90s of crystalline silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells with already promising energy conversion efficiencies above 18%, this device architecture has experienced an extraordinary history of development, embodying outstanding scientific findings and efficiency records.
During 2017, the PV industry is forecast to produce and ship close to 100GW of solar modules, reaching this key milestone well ahead of all market forecasts previously projected. Furthermore, the explosive growth of solar PV shows no sign of abating, despite the constant threats and barriers imposed by on-going trade import restrictions.
LONGi, Jolywood and many other large PV manufacturers claim that bifacial mono c-Si technology is the future. Since 2015, bifacial PV installations have been entering multi- MW installation levels, and are expected to enter multi-GW levels in 2018.
Modern single metallization lines using flatbed screen printing (FSP) can realize a maximum output of approximately 2,000 wafers/h. For several reasons, achieving a significant further increase in throughput of the FSP process is technically challenging.
