The Czech government announced recently that it was about to take special measures against the ongoing solar boom in the country. These measures are to limit the rapid construction of solar power plants, which would otherwise lead to a dramatic increase in the price of electricity in the future. One of these measures maybe a brand-new tax imposed on producers of solar power.
After a relatively quiet Monday, the second day of the EU PVSEC conference in Valencia certainly ‘hotted up’, in more than one sense of the word. With temperatures hitting 28°C, but feeling more like the high 30s, the air conditioning and vastness of the Feria Valencia are welcome as the suited and booted attendees meander their way around the eight halls and the conference centre.
Product Briefing Outline: Manz Automation has developed the OneStep selective emitter (SE) system for crystalline silicon solar cells. Among competing SE processes, the laser process consists of only one single process step, without any consumable usage. Investment payback is said to be less than one year, while the small footprint allows easy retrofit of existing production lines. The tool is claimed to enable cell efficiency gains of up to 0.5%.
Product Briefing Outline: Craic Technologies has launched the 20/20 PV Microspectrometer, which is designed to measure UV-visible NIR-range transmission, absorbance, reflectance, and emission and fluorescence spectra of sample areas smaller than a micron in width. The thickness of thin films and colour spaces can also be determined. The 20/20 PV system is claimed to be the most powerful instrument from Craic Technologies.
Product Briefing Outline: teamtechnik is launching a new, more compact STRINGER TT1200, which can solder solar cell strings at 1200 cycles per hour on just one track, making it one of the fastest in the world. teamtechnik has focused on the efficiency optimization of this stringer technology and has improved the price-performance ratio further. Other improvements include shorter set-up times and a shorter delivery time of a maximum of three months. The system’s power consumption and noise levels have also been reduced.
Local press reports in France have pointed towards feed-in tariff cuts for solar power installations. The French government is expected to follow the trend in solar slashing to keep its policy in line with the massive price drops apparent across the industry.
Product Briefing Outline: Critical Manufacturing’s cmNAVIGO 2.0 Solar Edition allows photovoltaic manufacturers to combine a highly flexible and pre-customized rich set of manufacturing execution and analytical solutions with tightly integrated quality tools. The MES software is designed to have a unique modeling versatility, enabling it to respond to the most demanding and complex scenarios in manufacturing plants.
In contrast to the cloud of uncertainty prevailing over much of the thin-film equipment supply chain today, recent quarterly results within the c-Si segment from the likes of Centrotherm, Roth and Rau, Manz Automation, Applied Materials, and Amtech suggest sunny times lie ahead for these leading c-Si tool suppliers.
Product Briefing Outline: Somont has made further improvements to its CERTUS stringing system, which is designed for production capacities from 50 – 100MW per year. The CERTUS features a modular concept to match the desired capacity requirements. CERTUS integrates all elements needed at the front-end of the module production line with new, state-of-the art technology for the stringer, in-line string testing, matrix lay-up, interconnection, matrix testing and lay-up on the glass plate.
