PHOTOVOLTAICS - News & Technology
What's cool about solar panels: Photovoltaic cells and woofers
photovoltaic woofer - cells - new technology
PHOTOVOLTAICS - News & Technology Solar as a technology is full of surprises. When it is believed that a particular solar cell or application has reached its technical limitations, often a new approach leads to increased optimization.
SolarPower Europe looked at the latest developments in solar technology that could reduce the overall cost of the system and thus lead to increased growth.
woofer : Mono - close to the monopoly
PHOTOVOLTAICS - News & Technology With the solar industry focusing on improving the performance of photovoltaic devices, monocrystalline silicon has become the material of choice for wafers over cast polycrystalline silicon (also referred to as polycrystalline). Monocrystalline silicon, which has fewer defects than polycrystalline, thus allowing the production of higher cell yields, dominates the solar market with an estimated market share of 80% today. Once the dominant variant, polycrystalline now accounts for only 20% of the market and is expected to disappear completely in the coming years. In any case, the scale will move further towards monophony this year, as all new silicon chip crystallization capabilities for rod and wafer fabrics have focused on the monophonic variant.
PHOTOVOLTAICS - News & Technology For example, the world's largest manufacturer of integrated solar modules LONGi Group, which is also the largest wafer manufacturer today and has been the main proponent of monocrystalline wafers, has quickly carried out its ambitious expansion plans. Having reached an installed capacity of 85 GW by the end of 2020, the LONGi group alone now targets 105 GW by the end of 2021, over 76% of last year's newly installed solar power.
The increased focus of the photovoltaic industry on high-performance silicon crystal cell technologies has led to yet another variant of monocrystalline wafer: "n-type" products or negatively doped products. These wafers, on the other hand, are doped with the current standard p-type substrates and are the preferred choice for high-performance crystal cell technologies, such as interaction cells (IBCs), heteroconjugates (HJTs) and passive contacts, often referred to as "TO". With few companies now producing volume of these advanced architectural cells, oil wafers gained less than 10% market share in 2020, but are expected to grow significantly in the coming years - to about 50% in a decade, according to ITRPV.
