The Australian federal government is investing $1 billion in the Solar Sunshot program to booster domestic PV manufacturing and the solar supply chain.
In 2023 India added 20.8 gigawatts (GW) of solar modules and3.2 GW of solar cell manufacturing capacity, according to Mercom India.
The PV market is booming. But European manufacturers are in crisis mode due to the overwhelmingly favourable competition from China. Companies such as Meyer Burger are threatening to close down module production. They are calling for resilience bonuses, among other incentives.
The new Dutch program SolarNL now started. It aims to build up a strong PV cell and module manufacturing industry in the Netherlands and is financed publicly and privately.
DAS Solar has developed a TOPCon 4.0 Plus high-efficiency solar cell that boasts an efficiency of 26.36% and an open-circuit voltage of 742mV, breaking the world record for this type of cell.
Meyer Burger plans to focus on profitable PV production in the USA and close its module production in Germany. In the absence of political measures to create fair competitive conditions, the company intends to take action against the current losses.
Trina Solar has been recognised for its performance in promoting sustainable development by gaining a Bloomberg Green ESG-Enterprises award as part of the Bloomberg Green ESG 50 list.
Free charge carriers in perovskite solar cells are presumably protected from decay in a special way, as researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich have discovered by means of novel photoluminescence measurements.
Longi announced that its Jiaxing Production Base has been recognized by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as a Global Lighthouse Factory, the world’s first solar module manufacturing base joining WEF's Global Lighthouse Network (GLN).
Longi has set a new world record of 27.09% for the efficiency of crystalline silicon Heterojunction Back Contact (HBC) solar cells, certified by the Institute for Solar Energy Research Hamelin (ISFH) in Germany.
The EU is currently struggling to find a common strategy to rebuild photovoltaic production. Know-how and inventiveness are also available in "good old Europe", as a visit to Teamtechnik, technology leader for systems for solar cell strings, shows.
Menlo Electric partners with Tongwei to provide high-quality solar solutions and drive innovation in the EMEA solar market.
REC Group introduces the Alpha Pure-RX with 470 watts. It is the manufacturer's most powerful residential rooftop module to date. The Alpha module has a power density of 226 watts per square metre.
Manufacturer Solar Fabrik has started the delivery of the new solar module Mono S5 Installer Series. The mono module delivers 300 watts and comes to 207 watts per square metre.
The resilience of supply chains for key technologies for the energy transition, such as photovoltaics and wind power, is in a poor state in Europe. Import dependency, especially on China, is immensely high. A study shows this and gives recommendations.
Meyer Burger further expanded its production capacities in Germany and produced high-performance solar modules totaling 302 megawatts (MW) in the first half of 2023. At the same time, the company complains of a market failure in Europe.
Belectric is highlighting its return to the United Kingdom (UK) as an EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) service provider. The solar energy specialist is working with Luminous Energy to build a large-scale solar farm near Norwich in England.
The lack of recovery of the Chinese economy is causing a decline in demand for raw materials and solar cells, wafers and panels. Where producers and manufacturers were previously able to make mutual agreements to support prices, demand has now fallen to such an extent that prices have completely fallen through the ice. "There really seems to be complete panic," says Gerard Scheper, CEO of European Solar.
Tandem solar cells made from a combination of perovskites and silicon promise efficiencies of over 30 per cent. Research laboratories around the world regularly announce new record values. However, these records are realised on surfaces that are smaller by a factor of 400 than the current wafer size of a solar cell. Researchers at Fraunhofer ISE want to change this.
With a new solar simulator, it is now possible to precisely determine the output of tandem solar cells. In a first step, the developers designed the system for perovskite-silicon tandems.
The total capacity of the new PV module factories of Belinus will exceed 5 GW by the end of 2025. The cell technologies will used will be high-efficiency TBC & TopCon, and the locations will be Belgium and Georgia.
European Solar Manufacturing Council (ESMC) responds to the proposals of the European Commission adopted amending the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER), and the proposed Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework (TCTF).
The Chinese manufacturer LONGi presents its latest photovoltaic module: According to the company, the Hi-Mo 6 achieves an efficiency of up to 22.8 percent in mass production.
Trina Solar recently announced that its 210mm n-type i-TOPCon solar cells have started rolling off the production line at its Gigafactory in China.
Brussels is supporting the expansion of module factories and the production of other solar components. A total of 30 gigawatts of capacity is to be created. Solar Power Europe is proposing a financing fund for this purpose.
