Researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the University of Newcastle have found that “hidden contaminants” in TOPCon and HJT modules can lead to a power loss of up to 16%.
Australian startup SunDrive Solar has revealed that it has undergone a restructuring of the company, resulting in job cuts, as it looks to “sharpen focus on solar”.
The two-pronged attack of vastly growing solar capacity and the shift to n-type technologies has converged to make silver a real pressure point for future solar manufacturing.
Solar manufacturer Qcells has partnered with Lumet, a specialist in solar cell metallisation technology, to reduce the cost of its cell production lines.
PV Tech Premium talks to Solarcycle’s co-founders about their company’s unique ability to extract every single constituent material out of an end-of-life PV module, how solar panels are not lasting as long as people expected, the race to prevent solar waste being illegally dumped across the globe, and how modules can have a useful second life.
As the PV industry reckons with its social and environmental impact and the byproducts of its processes, beyond the near-term questions over provenance and manufacturing ethics, concerns at the horizon of a module’s lifespan are coming more and more into focus.
Newly granted patents for solar cell architecture that reduces silver costs and increases power generation could see the new technology draw closer to commercialisation.
