SiOnyx has advised that its patented ultrafast laser texturing technology, Black Silicon, has reached 0.3%, absolute, efficiency growth over typical industry baseline solar cells. The company’s 156mm multicrystalline silicon cells, which are manufactured under a partnership with ISC Konstanz, is said to have attained average absolute efficiencies over 17%.
JinkoSolar Holding has provided a calm and unruffled response to the SolarWorld/CASM petition news, stating that the company intends to carry on its manufacturing practices as normal while the US International Trade Commission (ITC) and the US Department of Commerce (DOC) decide how to respond to the allegations of unfair trading practices on the part of Chinese cell and module manufacturers.
Oregon-based SolarWorld announced that along with seven other US manufacturers, it had petitioned the US federal government to stop what it calls, “an ever-increasing tide of heavily subsidized solar cells and panels that China’s state-supported solar industry is illegally dumping into the American market.” Spearheaded under the name, The Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing, the group filed complaints with both the US Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission.
Task force leader, Christian Prischmann, from UIbrich, a specialist metals provider to the PV industry, was the recipient of the Standards Leadership award. The European Semi award went to Dr. Tibor Pavelka, CEO of Semilab Co. Ltd. who is a producer of metrology equipment for the characterization of semiconductor and PV materials.
Natcore Technology and MX Holding advised that they had mutually signed a letter of intent to form a joint venture for the research and development of efficiency and cost in the solar industry. The R&D work will incorporate Natcore’s liquid phase deposition (LPD) technology combined with work by Dr. Daniele Margadona, CTO of the MX Group.
JinkoSolar has restarted solar cell production at its plant in Haining, China, after receiving approval by the local Haining government and an appointed panel of experts that remediation work after a fluoride chemical leak satisfied environmental requirements. Clearance by the ‘Experts Committee’ was issued to JinkSolar on October 9, according to the company.
Softening end-market demand and production overcapacity have led to a significant decline in new PV equipment bookings in the second quarter of 2011, according to SEMI’s latest version of its ‘Worldwide Photovoltaic Equipment Market Statistics Report.’ Equipment billings reached US$2.03 billion for the quarter ended on June 30, 2011, an increase of 17% quarter-over-quarter, after declining 19% in the first quarter. However, bookings, a leading indicator were down 18%, compared with the previous quarter to US$1.79 billion. SEMI said that the book-to-bill ratio dipped below parity to 0.88 for the first time in the past six quarters.
Two weeks after Conergy was busy putting out fires surrounding the rumors that it was planning to close its manufacturing plant in Frankfurt, the company has advised that it will be halting production of its wafer and cell manufacturing lines at the German facility. The company advised that its PV module production at the Oder plant would continue, but that the over-capacity, price pressures and the inability to cover the costs of wafer and cell manufacturing had forced it to discontinue the productions for the time being.
DuPont Microcircuit Materials (MCM) has announced the release of its latest photovoltaic metallization paste, with 15% less silver than previous pastes. The introduction of the Solamet PV51M comes as part of the company’s continued attempts to reduce the silver content of its pastes by 20%, in the face of rising silver prices.
Project Panda, a research partnership started in 2009 between Yingli Green Energy Holding, the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands (ECN) and Amtech Systems’ solar division Tempress Systems, revealed that its N-type Metal Wrap Through (N-MWT) PV cell and module technology had reached a cell efficiency of 19.7% and a module efficiency of 17.6%.
