Based on analysis of 21 PV manufacturers that were listed on various stock exchanges around the world in 2018, PV Tech can reveal the top 10 R&D spenders.
PV Tech has been covering analysis of R&D expenditures of PV manufacturers for over a decade. This blog anticipates some of the key trends set to be fully revealed in the forthcoming edition of technical journal Photovoltaics International.
PV is increasingly becoming the cheapest energy source and therefore has become the energy source with the highest yearly capacity additions! Even in 2018, after some scepticism right after SNEC 2018, due to the announcement of the Chinese Government to stop supporting PV as intensively as in 2017, more than 100GW (109GW) have been installed worldwide (we actually bet a crate of beer on that!) and 125GW has been forecasted to be installed in 2019.
Hanergy Thin Film Power Group has claimed a new conversion efficiency record for an N-type monocrystalline heterojunction solar cell with a conversion efficiency of 24.23%.
We have tracked the annual R&D spending of 12 key publicly listed PV module manufacturers over the last 10 years. We present our new methodology with a broader scope which reveals record levels of investment in solar innovation.
Hanergy Thin Film Power Group has signed a US$130 million, 100MW supply deal with Japanese firm, Forest Group to supply its ‘HanTile’ thin-film solar roof tile systems in the Japanese market.
China headquartered PV thin-film equipment and module producer Hanergy Thin Film Power Group (Hanergy TF) has created a completely new business model in 2017 that provides new industrial parks a selection from a portfolio of a-Si, CIGS, GaAs and c-Si heterojunction (HJ) turnkey production lines to provide local governments access to solar technology and attract other hi-tech companies to new industrial parks.
According to the Financial Times, Hanergy Holding Group plans to build a 300MW CIGS thin-film production plant in partnership with the local government Datong City and Datong Coal Mine Group as part of a wider initiative on developing a solar industry development cluster.
The production volume of solar PV panels based on thin-film deposition of semiconductor materials on large-area glass panels is set to hit a seven-year low in 2017, in spite of the end-market demand for solar panels increasing by a factor of three over the same time period.
