Technical Papers

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles in solar operations and maintenance can reduce costs and save hours of painstaking labour, but only if applied correctly. Aline Kirsten Vidal de Oliveira, Mohammadreza Aghaei and Ricardo Rüther explore the optimal use of aerial inspections and emerging methods for analysing the data they gather to identify faults.

On 10 April 2020, South Africa’s biggest solar PV complex to date sprang into operation as the final phase was completed. The timing was extremely fortunate, just a day ahead of the country’s government announcing a nationwide lockdown as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to spread worldwide.

Commissioning should be as integral to the installation of a PV plant as a pre-flight checklist is to an aeroplane journey. Sara Verbruggen reports on the latest tools and technologies being deployed to ensure a smooth commissioning process and a project that operates safely and optimally.

Recently name checked as among the cheapest places in the world to develop solar, Chile has emerged as a particularly popular destination for solar finance. But as the country proceeds towards a 100% renewables target, political instability and legacy network issues stand in its way. Molly Lempriere explores how Chile can leap those hurdles on its way to a green grid.

An increasing number of banks are turning away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy financing. As Catherine Early reports, despite the chilling effect of the coronavirus pandemic on the industry, hopes are high that a tipping point is nearing.

PV’s rise to the mainstream finds it now inextricably linked to an economy tumbling towards recession. Players approached by José Rojo acknowledge the disruption but believe the chaos may hand the industry a chance to become a core part of a new world rebuilt along green lines.

From manufacturing and logistics constraints to power price collapses, the effects of the coronavirus pandemic are being felt throughout the entire solar supply chain. Liam Stoker details the impacts on the industry and how they have been mitigated.

Since its emergence, the novel coronavirus has spread quickly across the world causing untold disruption. Liam Stoker and José Rojo detail how the pandemic has affected the clean energy economy to date.

Silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cell technology is an attractive technology for large-scale production of solar cells with a high conversion efficiency beyond 24%. One key element of SHJ solar cells, contrasting with today’s widespread passivated emitter and rear contact (PERC) cell technology, is the use of transparent conductive oxide (TCO), which poses challenges in performance and costs but also presents opportunities. This paper discusses these aspects and shows the potential for improving cell efficiency at reduced cost by using new TCOs deposited by direct current (DC) sputtering.

In this paper the situation of solar cell production in China is summarized, and an attempt is made to answer the question of whether passivated contacts could replace PERC technology, which will eventually reach its efficiency limit in the future.