Fab & Facilities

In this paper, all the steps in Kalyon PV’s vertical production are described, and a cost of ownership (COO) analysis is performed for passivated emitter rear contact (PERC) and advanced cell concepts.

This paper discusses what approaches from the digitalization field can be used quickly and easily to accelerate ramp-up, to analyse overlapping data and to improve production either manually or automatically.

To embrace the terawatt-scale challenge of the PV market growth, a low-carbon and resource-efficient pathway has to be guaranteed. An approach for doing this is to enable market mechanisms that account for the greenhouse gases emissions, and their associated costs, from PV systems and components.

This paper outlines how a blend of physics-based analysis and statistical data science methods can aid continuous improvement and yield optimization in high-volume solar cell fabrication.

PV manufacturing capacity expansion announcements in 2019 were a stark contrast to 2018, when major policy changes in China impacted the upstream supply chain. This paper looks in detail at not only a significant recovery in capacity expansions throughout the year but also new trends in the capacity scale of announcements and a marked shift in wafer sizes and cell technology.

This paper explains how these modern production concepts are implemented in ISC’s lab, and details the plans for their utilization in future production sites, with illustrations of the key benefits in practice. With these modern manufacturing concepts, it will even be possible to bring future c-Si PV production back to the EU with the choice of an appropriate cell concept (high efficiency but proven technology, e.g. interdigitated back-contact (IBC) cells, such as ZEBRA) and a sound business plan.

Today, solar power is one of the cheapest ways of providing energy internationally, partly because of the excellent R&D work in Europe. Prices of modules have fallen by half in the past three years, and at the same time the use of solar power has been steadily increasing. The reason why there has been an increase in the use of solar energy in Europe and Germany is the achievement of the climate targets of the Paris Agreement. While the machines for the production of solar modules are still manufactured in Germany, the production of cells has now almost completely migrated to Asia. Therefore, the VDMA commissioned a study from Fraunhofer ISE to evaluate whether the production of solar modules at competitive costs could again be realized in Europe. This paper presents the results of the VDMA study.

PV manufacturing capacity expansion announcements in 2018 were significantly impacted by major policy changes mid-year in China. This paper looks in detail at the contrasting developments in the first half of the year, compared with the second half. Attention will also be given to the regional site selection changes as well as to the advanced manufacturing trends emerging in 2018. Finally, after five years of tracking capacity expansion plans, an overview of cumulative expansions, coupled to global solar demand and to capacity trends specifically in China, will be provided.

Ever since the manufacturing of PV modules began suffering from a huge price decline, the reduction of the production cost has been a task of high priority. Digitalization is a subsequent further development of the automation of today’s PV cell and module manufacturing processes and can help to decrease production costs. A central concept of digitalization is the digital twin, which represents the properties and behaviours of physical assets, materials, processes or eventually the entire production line (the so-called smart fab). Different cases of its use are presented in this paper, along with a discussion of the corresponding applications of such digital twins. Finally, a smart fab for PV production is described.

PV manufacturing capacity expansion announcements in the second quarter of 2018 were slightly higher than the previous quarter, although activity slumped specifically in June, following China’s decision to suddenly cap utility-scale and distributed generation projects. The quarter was also characterized by activity in India, partially driven by a major Chinese manufacturer. The report will also analyze first half year capacity expansion plans and targeted locations, globally.