Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

Wood Mackenzie has predicted solar equipment cost increases will ease back after last year saw the average cost of solar electricity rise for the first time in the Asia-Pacific region.

Bengaluru-based Mecwin Technologies Ltd and Karnataka Vikas Grameena Bank (KVGB) have partnered to finance solar pump-sets for farmers. Adani has formed a new energy arm called Adani New Industries Limited (ANIL).

PV cell and module manufacturers are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to monitor production lines and the products coming off them in minute detail. As inline monitoring and testing equipment become more sophisticated, cell and module makers must be prepared to manage the enormous amounts of data and pull out the points that will save them time and money. pv magazine examines the software solutions backing state-of-the-art PV production.

The title of Martin Schachinger’s October market commentary was “Module prices set to rocket back to 2019 levels.” This month, he writes that prices have already reached December 2018 levels and notes that there is no reversal in sight. Prices for all module technologies have once again risen by an average of 3 percentage points since last month.

The Mumbai-headquartered solar manufacturer supplied its 335 Wp polysilicon modules for the 1.53 MW PV project located at Kovilpatti in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu.

Scientists at the Nankai University in China have provided a comprehensive overview of current research on silicon heterojunction-based tandem solar cells (SHJ-TSCs) and shared their expectations of future developments in this field.

An international research team has examined combining solar power generation with energy-intensive hydroponic horticulture and has found that this may be a viable solution depending on project size and available incentive policies. Their approach considered various factors impacting PV system efficiency, including environmental factors, the type of solar array, and the electricity demand from the hydroponic farm.

There is a threshold at which big becomes too big when it comes to PV module sizes, argues Hongbin Fang, the director of product marketing at Longi Solar. Fang recently said at pv magazine’s Roundtables USA event that despite size limits, there is still a lot of efficiency and cost-reduction potential to come.

German engineering association the VDMA has reported increasing orders and sales for PV equipment suppliers in the third quarter. China accounted for around 80% of PV production equipment demand during the period.

Conceived by a Dutch consortium, according to Design for Recycling guidelines, the panel is being developed with two different encapsulants, one for the front of the module, which joins the glass and cells together; and a slightly different formulation for the back of the module, which attaches cells and backsheet together.