Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

PV manufacturers, developers, and component suppliers have spent years negotiating a bewildering array of wafer and panel formats but recent developments in China hold the promise of long-awaited standardisation, as Vincent Shaw reports.

Indian scientists have produced high-purity polysilicon ingots from recycled solar cells using “spark plasma sintering” (SPS), and claim they may achieve a purity level comparable to commercially available products.

Rystad Energy believes China could be on track for another record year in 2023, with expectations for more than 150 GW of new PV capacity. The Norwegian consultancy says the country could also potentially install 165 GW in 2024 and 170 GW in 2025.

Sodium-ion batteries could diversify the battery supply chain and take the weight off the shoulders of ubiquitous lithium-ion technology. pv magazine sits down with Florian Kogler, head of safety and user experience at Austrian sodium-ion battery business Kite Rise, to discuss the technology’s potential and the company’s development plans for batteries made in Europe.

German PV analyst Karl-Heinz Remmers looks at current price trends in the global and European PV industry. The figures he provides could explain how overcapacity and warehouses full of PV modules are affecting market prices.

Clean Energy Associates projects that major Chinese manufacturers will achieve a global solar module manufacturing capacity of 1 terawatt by the end of 2024. Furthermore, this capacity is projected to hit that same mark within China’s borders by 2025.

Multiple factors affect the productive lifespan of a residential solar panel. In the first part of this series, we look at the solar panels themselves.

REC has developed a new series of heterojunction solar panels with efficiencies up to 22.6% and an operating temperature coefficient of -0.24% per degree Celsius.

Western Australian company Australian Vanadium Limited (AVL) seems to be fairly delayed in realising its vanadium mine and processing plant vision in Western Australia. Nonetheless, the company has signed a new option agreement to purchase land for its processing plant near Geraldton.

In a new weekly update for pv magazine, OPIS, a Dow Jones company, provides a quick look at the main price trends in the global PV industry.