Cell and module technology | One of the defining trends to emerge so far in 2017 has been an explosion of interest in bifacial PV technology. In the first of three articles in our bifacial special report, Radovan Kopecek looks at some of the key technologies vying for position at the vanguard of fast-growing part of the market.
Construction | Automated systems to speed up the construction of PV power plants have become a key tool in building bigger and cheaper projects. Sara Verbruggen looks at some of the state-of-art technologies helping the industry drive down system costs
Forecasting | Predicting the power production of a PV plant offers a multitude of benefits to plant owners and grid operators. Jose Ruiz-Arias looks at the challenges of accurate forecasting across different timescales and in different climate zonesForecasting | Predicting the power production of a PV plant offers a multitude of benefits to plant owners and grid operators. Jose Ruiz-Arias looks at the challenges of accurate forecasting across different timescales and in different climate zones.
System design | Despite the decline of subsidies in the UK, well designed commercial PV systems still offer potentially attractive financial benefits to businesses. Kirsty Berry and Andrew Hancock of Syzygy Renewables detail some of the key considerations in designing and executing a commercial solar system that will deliver maximum return on investment.
Data | The collection of inaccurate data at any point in the life cycle of a solar plant will undermine almost every aspect of the investment accounting. Mark Skidmore, Samantha Doshi, Matthia Heinze and Christos Monokroussos from TÜV Rheinland discuss the importance of precision data gathering in mitigating risk for builders, operators and financiers
Quality | The speed of solar deployment in India has raised concerns that quality maybe sacrificed for expediency. As Tom Kenning reports, although there are warning signs of a potential quality problem, efforts are underway to nip it in the bud.
Risk mitigation | The EU-funded Solar Bankability Project has developed a framework for managing the potential legal, technical and economic risks associated with PV projects. Here, members of the team behind the project set out some of the key tools and guidelines that have been devised to ensure ongoing quality management over the entire lifecycle of a PV power plant.
This edition’s bifacial focus looks at cell types and module configurations, IEC standards to improve labelling and system design under varying climatic conditions.
As an important component of utility-scale PV, we cover a range of energy storage news, analysis and technical briefings.
We also take a look at module failure detection, the role of robotics, executing commercial scale projects, a summary of the core arguments involved in the US ITC section 201 vote and much more.
It’s always nice when someone tells you directly that you can’t do something to set out and prove them wrong. Photovoltaics International, its sister title PV-Tech.org and their publisher Solar Media were told in the early phases of planning the inaugural PV CellTech conference, that pulling together a string of CTOs and R&D heads from the some of the biggest firms in the cell processing supply chain would not be possible. Following the event’s second outing in March 2017, we have now done it twice.
The first appearance of a shingled solar cell interconnection pattern (see Fig. 1) dates back to 1956 with a US patent filed by Dickson [1] for Hoffman Electronics Corporation, which is just two years after the first publication of a silicon solar cell by Chapin et al. [2]. In the years that followed, further patents were filed containing concepts of shingling solar cells serving various module designs and applications – for example, Nielsen [3] for Nokia Bell Labs, Myer [4] for Hughes Aircraft Company, Baron [5] for Trw Inc, Gochermann and Soll [6] for Daimler-Benz Aerospace AG, Yang et al.
