Photovoltaics International Papers

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.

Because of its symmetrical a-Si/c-Si/a-Si structure, silicon heterojunction (SHJ) cell technology offers the possibility to use much thinner wafers, and thus to reduce material and production cost. In order to evaluate the industrial feasibility of these thinner heterojunction cells, wafers from the standard thickness of 160μm down to 40μm were processed on the heterojunction pilot line at CEA-INES.

Having all manufacturing stages – from raw materials to finished modules – located under one roof in the same factory offers the scope to optimize module quality and reliability.

The month of July proved to be the most active for new capacity expansion announcements in the third quarter of 2017.