Major ‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) member JinkoSolar has extended its supply chain cooperation with major polysilicon and merchant solar cell manufacturer Tongwei Group, with Tongwei gaining extra gigawatts of mono wafers from JinkoSolar.
Trina Solar has announced that a host of inverters that are compatible with 210mm modules are being launched, a development the company says will streamline the PV supply chain.
While COVID-19 may have dominated headlines internationally this year, 2020 has been a year of considerable progress for the global solar supply chain. Here, the PV Tech editorial team re-cap some of the biggest and most impactful stories of the year.
Leading monocrystalline wafer producer and ‘Solar Module Super League’ (SMSL) member, LONGi Green Energy has defied the downward pricing pressure on its core wafer business and weak global demand, driven by the impact of COVID-19 on the solar industry supply chain to report record revenue, profit, and module shipments in the first half of 2020.
Severe floods in southeastern China have forced the closure of a polysilicon facility owned by Tongwei, dealing yet another blow to the solar industry’s supply chain.
PV Tech continues its deep-dive into the making of Trina Solar’s new Vertex platform, delving into the thought process behind the manufacturer’s ‘low voltage, high current’ approach, how Trina intends to scale up manufacturing, and why it believes the solar supply chain must unite behind 600W+ modules.
A total of seven China-based PV manufacturers have officially started efforts to establish a new ‘M10’ (182mm x 182mm p-type monocrystalline) large-area wafer size standard to reduce manufacturing costs throughout the entire solar industry supply chain as the number of large-area wafer sizes have emerged in the last few years.
From manufacturing and logistics constraints to power price collapses, the effects of the coronavirus pandemic are being felt throughout the entire solar supply chain. Liam Stoker details the impacts on the industry and how they have been mitigated.
PV manufacturing capacity expansion announcements in 2019 were a stark contrast to 2018, when major policy changes in China impacted the upstream supply chain. This paper looks in detail at not only a significant recovery in capacity expansions throughout the year but also new trends in the capacity scale of announcements and a marked shift in wafer sizes and cell technology.
