The PV CellTech 2017 conference has just finished. The findings were revealing, stimulating, thought-provoking, and in terms of mass production metrics from a PV event, once again ground-breaking, writes Finlay Colville.
Specialist PV manufacturing equipment supplier RENA Technologies has secured several major orders from Asia-based PV cell manufacturers for its alkaline texturing and junction isolation tools in the first quarter of 2017.
Leading PV manufacturing equipment and technology supplier Meyer Burger has recently announced a swathe of new orders that encompass diamond wire saw equipment, PERC upgrade technology and Heterojunction (HJT) cell technology.
DuPont Photovoltaic Solutions is a well-known supplier of specialty materials to the solar energy industry, especially with its ‘Solamet’ photovoltaic metallization pastes that improve cell efficiencies and the ‘Tedlar’ PVF film-based backsheet materials for modules.
Major Japanese electronics company Panasonic has increased its ‘HIT’ (Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin layer) solar module product warranty from 15 years to 25 years and applies to all HIT modules installed from 2017.
Taiwan-based merchant solar cell and module producer Neo Solar Power (NSP) is to phase-out production of multicrystalline products and switch completely to monocrystalline production, according to local news reports.
Swiss-based PV manufacturing equipment specialist INDEOtec SA has secured a new order for a combined OCTOPUS II – PECVD/PVD deposition system for high-efficiency and heterojunction solar cell development from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia.
Panasonic’s solar manufacturing deal with Tesla at the former SolarCity 1GW solar cell and module assembly plant at RiverBend, Buffalo, New York State, which was recently renamed Gigafactory 2 by Tesla is to be ramped to its 1GW nameplate capacity exclusively by Panasonic in 2019.
