Manufacturing

Only one month after announcing a PERC module efficiency of 20.41%, the Chinese solar manufacturer announced it has now achieved a 23.6% efficiency for its PERC monocrystalline cells, thus beating its own previous records.

As a part of its expanding quality and certification program, the Clean Energy Council has taken action to suspend or delist eight solar suppliers in the first two months of 2018. The action has applied to 156 PV module or inverter models, including Shenzhen Sofarsolar inverter 3000TL, which the CEC announced on Wednesday had failed testing.

While bifacial panels may capture up to 10% more light than monofacial panels, single-axis trackers typically add 25% to that bifacial gain, resulting in a roughly estimated 12.5% gain from the two technologies combined, compared with fixed installs using monofacial panels.

Gavin Merchant from SolarEdge Australia and New Zealand speaks to pv magazine Australia about the growing acceptance of module-level power electronics across all solar market segments. The rise of storage is also bringing new opportunities.

Switzerland’s Meyer Burger to deliver and install its SmartWire Connection Technology at REC Group’s production facility in Singapore at the start of Q2, company confirms.

The decorated PV pioneer will step aside from his role as Trina Solar’s VP and chief scientist on February 12 in order to devote more time to his family life.

The Austrian inverter specialist is launching a new version of its Energy Package upgraded with storage units from LG Chem.

The Chinese manufacturer confirms that it has authorized its U.S. subsidiary to finalize plans for the investment.

Longi Solar will set up a 1 GW solar PV manufacturing facility in India’s Andhra Pradesh. It will manufacture 500 MW of cells and 500 MW of modules, a spokesperson tells pv magazine. The facility is expected to be commissioned by Q1 2019 at the latest, and will seek to take advantage of India’s exemption from the recent U.S. solar tariffs, imposed by President Trump last week.

Chinese PV manufacturer Jinergy announced last week that it was the supplier of South Australia’s first utility scale PV array, the 6 MW Whyalla Solar Power Plant. The manufacturer shipped monocrystalline PERC modules for the project.