South Korea’s SDN has developed new bifacial solar modules based on M10 wafers. It claims the new panels are the largest to be produced in South Korea.

TrendForce says polysilicon will be 3.2% cheaper in March than in February. This will lead to lower wafer, cell and module prices and will effectively spur installation demand.

Scientists from Germany’s Fraunhofer ISE and US panel maker Solaria have applied thermal laser separation and post-metallization passivated edge technology to tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) cell production. They have developed shingle PV devices that are more efficient than cells built with conventional laser scribing and mechanical cleaving methods.

The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has certified that a South Korean research team has achieved a 25.73% efficiency rating with a perovskite PV cell based on alkylammonium chlorides. The champion device built by the scientists reached an efficiency of 26.08%.

California-based SEG Solar says its new panels have a temperature coefficient of -0.30% per degree Celsius. They come with a 30-year power output guarantee for 87.4% of the initial yield.

A US-Canadian group of scientists has used Lewis base molecules to improve surface passivation in a perovskite solar cell. The team produced a device with a high open-circuit voltage and remarkable stability levels.

A numerical study by researchers at India’s Chitkara University shows enhanced performance in the top device of a tandem solar cell based on copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS). The design had a higher open-circuit voltage, with the top cell acting as a current-limiting cell.

The China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association (CNMIA) said that prices for monocrystalline silicon ranged from CNY 222 ($32.30)/kg to CNY 248/kg last week, up 31.37% from the middle of January. Longi, meanwhile, has raised its wafer prices by more than 15%.

Researchers led by the University of Rochester claim to have increased the photoresponsivity of a lead-halide perovskite for solar cell applications by 250%. They created a perovskite film with a plasmonic substrate made of hyperbolic metamaterial and characterized it with transition dipole orientation.

Researchers in Germany have assessed direct coupling and integration between PV and batteries at the scale of a single PV module. They say their solution could be cheaper and provide superior performance than maximum power point tracking (MPPT) in optimizing PV system performance.