With many of the top-20 module suppliers to the solar industry now having multi-GW shipment volumes, attention has turned firmly to assessing metrics that companies can use to benchmark the quality and reliability of shipped products against their competitors.
Chinese PV firm LONGi Solar, which is the subsidiary of LONGi Group, has become arguably the industry’s greatest advocate of monocrystalline solar. In the first installment of a two-part interview, Zhenguo Li, LONGi Group’s president, speaks with Mark Osborne about the concept of PV3.0 and where the industry is likely to head next.
China-based PV manufacturer and downstream project developer ReneSola has officially completed the divestment of its integrated solar manufacturing operations to its chairman and CEO to focus exclusively on downstream business development.
'Silicon Module Super League' (SMSL) member GCL System Integration Technology (GCL-SI) has again improved the efficiency of its multicrystalline Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell (PERC) with ‘black-silicon’ texture.
‘Silicon Module Super League’ (SMSL) leader JinkoSolar has supplied the Jacumba Solar Project in San Diego County, California with mainstream leading-edge PV modules.
The International Solar Energy Research Center Konstanz e.V. (ISC Konstanz) has qualified Aurora Solar’s inline measurement and control technology for its BiSoN bifacial solar cell technology, which is licensed to PV manufacturers.
PV Tech reached its own little milestone of having reported and analysed the R&D spending habits of the same 12 key PV module manufacturers for 10 years. The results have just been published in sister technical journal Photovoltaics International as part of the annual leaders and laggards of R&D spending for 2016.
The significance of PV-Tech’s forthcoming conference in Kuala Lumpur – PV ModuleTech 2017 – has just moved to a new level, with the key company executives from all members of the Silicon Module Super League (SMSL) giving presentations on stage about the quality, reliability, and performance of their solar modules.
Once upon a time, it was relatively easy to verify a PV module manufacturer’s shipment claims and therefore any market share gains or shipment milestone claims as the majority of leading companies were public listed entities.
