Modules & Upstream Manufacturing

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.

First Solar has announced a limited production run of the “world’s first” bifacial solar panel with a cadmium telluride (CdTe) semiconductor. The pre-commercial Series 6 Plus Bifacial module is making its debut this week at Intersolar Europe in Munich, Germany.

The value of critical minerals companies listed on the ASX has hit $86.2 billion (USD 58.3bn), just scraping above the value of companies within the All Ordinaries Gold Index. Australia risen to the booming demand for these minerals, but experts have urged caution.

Recharge Industries, which had hoped to begin construction on its Geelong lithium-ion gigafactory this year, is reportedly refocusing its manpower on British endeavours. Despite Australia’s growing rhetoric around capturing more of the battery value chain, companies in the space are turning attention overseas.

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.

PV manufacturing capacity is projected to more than double by 2024, led by China, but oversupply is also anticipated, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Longi said today it cut the prices of its wafer products by 30% and Trina announced it will build a 25 GW monocrystalline ingot factory in the Sichuan province. Furthermore, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that the Chinese PV industry produced 39.92 GW of solar cells in April, and Datang Group unveiled the results of a tender to procure 8 GW of solar panels.

A global race is underway to capture the manufacturing market for clean energy technologies. While lady lucky has certainly shone on Australia, competition is fierce, experts say.

An international research team in China has used Czochralski n-type c-Si wafers from China-based Sichuan Yongxiang to build textured wafers with a thickness ranging from 65 μm to 55 μm. They have used the wafers in heterojunction solar cells ton hit efficiencies close to those of devices cells based on conventional wafers.

The annual SiliconPV Conference came to TU Delft in the Netherlands in April, and offered an important health check for the science and technology behind solar energy. pv magazine was on site to hear the latest from researchers reaching for higher efficiency through tandem cells and other innovations; looking to understand and mitigate cell degradation mechanisms; and working to cut down solar technology’s consumption of rare and expensive materials.