Collaboration by the U.S. Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and at the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) has set a certified record conversion efficiency of 29.8% for a III-V/Si solar cell.
PV module equipment specialist Valoe Corporation, formerly Cencorp has secured €4 million in new funding from Finland’s funding agency for innovation, Tekes.
Specialist PV manufacturing equipment supplier Amtech Systems said its subsidiary, Tempress Systems has secured new orders totalling around US$22 million, primarily from a major solar cell producer in Asia.
The PV industry has notched up another year of strong growth in 2015, with more in prospect for 2016. The PV Tech team looks back at the big stories that have defined the past 12 months in solar.
Leading module supply firm Hanwha Q CELLS is to almost triple its supply agreement with Sunrun, becoming one of the developer’s main suppliers in 2016.
Solar Frontier has broken a conversion efficiency record for CIS thin-film solar cells that has stood for over a year, achieving 22.3% efficiency on a 0.5cm² PV cell.
Leading cell technologists from all of the big-six Silicon Module Super League (SMSL) suppliers (Canadian Solar, Hanwha Q-Cells, JA Solar, JinkoSolar, Trina Solar and Yingli Green) have now been confirmed as speakers at PV Tech’s inaugural solar cell conference, PVCellTech, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 16-17 March 2016.
November was a bumper month for PV capacity expansion announcements, with the big-six Silicon Module Super League players once again in the headlines, writes Mark Osborne.
PV Nano Cell announced its plans to enter the US solar market with its ‘Sicrys’ silver and copper inks. The inks are expected to accelerate the adoption of solar photovoltaics (PV) by reducing the cost of silicon solar cell production, using an efficient process that produces sustainable inks without the use of hazardous wastes, and by increasing solar cell efficiencies at a mass production scale.
The big-six Silicon Module Super League (SMSL) members face manufacturing pressures over technology migration meaning big advances may not happen in 2016, writes Finlay Colville.
