Technical Papers

Leading PV inverter manufacturer Huawei discusses recent technical developments to a better understanding of bifacial solar module PV power plants, using three recent case studies. These efficient PV modules need to be used with devices such as inverters to maximize value. Recently, many inverters and solutions that match bifacial modules have appeared in the industry. Which solution is the best match for bifacial modules? Based on a large amount of experimental data, this article describes the solution needed for bifacial modules.

The in-house market research team at PV Tech, this journal’s sister website, has developed a new model for forecasting trends in polysilicon consumption by the solar industry. This article analyzes how, based on this new model, the industry’s use of polysilicon will dip below 4 grams per watt by the end of this year.

To realize power generation everywhere, customers and designers are eager for PV solutions offering total design freedom for seamless integration into everyday life. This trend becomes even more important if the ‘mega city’ development is taken into account: more and more people will live in city environments in the future while classical PV technologies do not offer proper solutions for this context.

Following an extensive research process, we can now reveal the top 10 module suppliers (by shipment volumes) for the calendar year 2017. The final listing – and the underlying numbers – confirms the trends of recent years and the continued dominance of our self-penned ‘Silicon Module Super League’ (SMSL) group.

PV manufacturing capacity expansion announcements in 2017 far exceeded the three preceding years, despite the significant slowdown in new plans in the third quarter. The year was dominated by c-Si solar cell expansion plans and the return of CdTe and CIGS thin-film activity – the highest seen in many years. This quarterly report reviews the fourth quarter activity as well offering a full-year review and analysis of a record year across all segments of upstream manufacturing.

We present an n-type bifacial IBC solar cell that uses a simple process comparable to our industrially proven n-type cell process for conventional H-grid front- and rear-contacted n-PERT cells. The process is based on tube diffusion and a simultaneous single-step screen-print of the contacts to both polarities, and has been demonstrated on an industrial line at pilot scale.

Relatively few experimental and academic studies about bifacial p-type PERC cells have been published to date. This paper looks at the experimental findings from JinkoSolar’s large area, industry-grade bifacial monocrystalline silicon PERC (biPERC) cells.

The market for commercial crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar modules has been ruled for decades by the well-established ribbon-interconnected Al-BSF solar cells, making their metrology and in particular the current-voltage measurement well defined and reproducible.

Major progress has been made in the PV industry in the last five years as a result of the extensive use of diamond wire during silicon wafering operations. Productivity has increased and costs have fallen to the point where the price of a monocrystalline wafer cut with diamond wire is approaching the price of a multicrystalline wafer cut using slurry.

Bifaciality can be implemented by varieties of architectures for solar cells, modules and in addition there are even many more applications on system level. This makes bifaciality a complex technology. Currently there is some confusion in the PV community what bifacial gains can be expected and how these transfer to the cost reduction and lowering the LCOE of the system. In this article we will describe how bifacial gains are defined, what bifacial gains can be expected and what this means for real applications.