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Old Posted Oct 14, 2015, 6:06 PM
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scalziand scalziand is offline
Mortaaaaaaaaar!
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Naugatuck, CT/Worcester,MA
Posts: 3,506
Things have moved fast this year.

Quote:
SolarCity Unveils World’s Most Efficient Rooftop Solar Panel, To Be Made in America
New module that generates more power per square foot than any rooftop solar panel in production will also be the highest-volume solar panel manufactured in the U.S.

Oct 02, 2015

SAN MATEO, Calif. – SolarCity (NASDAQ: SCTY) has built the world’s most efficient rooftop solar panel, with a module efficiency exceeding 22 percent. The new SolarCity panel generates more power per square foot and harvests more energy over a year than any other rooftop panel in production, and will be the highest volume solar panel manufactured in the Western Hemisphere.

SolarCity will begin producing the first modules in small quantities this month at its 100 MW pilot facility, but the majority of the new solar panels will ultimately be produced at SolarCity’s 1 GW facility in Buffalo, New York. SolarCity expects to be producing between 9,000 - 10,000 solar panels each day with similar efficiency when the Buffalo facility reaches full capacity.

SolarCity’s panel was measured with 22.04 percent module-level efficiency by Renewable Energy Test Center, a third-party certification testing provider for photovoltaic and renewable energy products. SolarCity’s new panel—created via a proprietary process that significantly reduces the manufacturing cost relative to other high-efficiency technologies—is the same size as standard efficiency solar panels, but produces 30-40 percent more power. SolarCity’s panel also performs better than other modules in high temperatures, which allows it to produce even more energy on an annual basis than other solar panels of comparable size.

http://www.solarcity.com/newsroom/pr...e-made-america
Quote:
Panasonic Quickly Beats SolarCity’s Solar Module Efficiency Record

October 9th, 2015 by Steve Hanley

Originally published on Solar Love.

Recently, SolarCity announced it will begin manufacturing the “world’s most efficient solar panels” at its factory in Buffalo, New York, starting in 2016. It claims it has designed a panel that converts 22.1% of sunlight into electricity.

Now, less than a week later, Panasonic says it has trumped that achievement. A Panasonic solar panel has established a new world record module conversion efficiency of 22.5% on a commercial sized prototype using solar cells based on mass production technology. The test results were confirmed by the renowned Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. The 72-cell, 270-watt prototype incorporates newly developed enhanced technology that will eventually be scaled into volume production.



http://cleantechnica.com/2015/10/09/...ciency-record/
Quote:
SolarCity & Panasonic Announcements May Mark Beginning Of Solar Without Subsidies

October 12th, 2015 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on The Handleman Post.
By Clayton Handleman

Not so long ago, Sunpower’s 20+% efficiency modules were seen as high end niche products. Last week SolarCity announced that it had leapfrogged that benchmark with its 22% modules currently rolling off of its 100 MW lines and soon to be rolling off its 1 GW line at Elon Musk’s ‘other’ gigafactory. With multiple vendors at GW scale with above 20% efficient modules, PV has reached the point of commoditizing high efficiency modules, and the ripple effect on system level costs has profound implications.

Adding fuel to the fire, in a recent Cleantechnica post, Panasonic shot back with its announcement of production prototypes testing at 22.5% efficiency. And the longtime leader, Sunpower, is in the process of upping its game with 23% efficient modules planned for production in 2017 in its Fab 5, which at a planned 800MW (.8GW) is also at the GW scale and rivaling SolarCity’s fab in capacity.

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/10/12/...out-subsidies/
Quote:
PERC Solar Cells Could Achieve 24% Conversion Efficiency Using Current Technologies

September 30th, 2015 by James Ayre

Monocrystalline solar cells utilizing a PERC (Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell) design could achieve conversion efficiencies as high as 24% via the use of technologies already on the market, according to the Institute for Solar Energy Research Hameln (ISFH).



The assertion was supported via a simulation that the ISFH presented at the recent EU PVSEC in Hamburg, Germany. The simulation showed that, via the use of a number of specific technologies (a wafer possessing a high charge carrier lifetime of 1000µs rather than 400µs, selective emitters, boron-doped aluminum paste for the local back surface field, 10 µm thin contact fingers rather than 60 µm, multi-wires rather than bus-bars), conversion efficiency could be boosted to 24% from the ~20.5% that it stands at today.

Commenting on the future of PERC solar cells, and thus the motives behind the simulation, ISFH presenter Byungsul Min commented: “The PERC (solar) cell will set a moving target and dominate the market for some time to come.”



http://cleantechnica.com/2015/09/30/...-technologies/

Last edited by scalziand; Oct 14, 2015 at 6:26 PM.
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