February 9, 2025

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Mass-produced European solar panels on the horizon – Information Centre – Research & Innovation

An EU-funded job has produced a European edition of higher-efficiency, subsequent-technology solar technological innovation and a minimal-cost producing course of action. The revolutionary solar cells could increase a switch to solar power and recharge European solar-panel generation.


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Photo voltaic cells and panels, or modules, are central to Europe’s motivation to working with renewable power to meet up with up to a third of its power demands by 2030. But whilst the power will be household generated, practically none of the important hardware is made in Europe.

Most mass-generated cells and modules are from China, Taiwan and Malaysia, according to an EU report. The most productive crystalline silicon solar-mobile technological innovation concepts on the market – interdigitated back-contacted (IBC) kind solar cells – are generated by a modest variety of American and Asian corporations.

Europe is now nearer to getting its possess edition of this technological innovation. The EU-funded NEXTBASE job has produced highly productive IBC solar cells in the silicon heterojunction configuration (IBC-SHJ).

The NEXTBASE cells can change twenty five.four % of the solar power they seize into power.

‘This is a European history for an industrially possible edition of IBC-SHJ technological innovation,’ suggests job coordinator Kaining Ding of the Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH research organisation in Germany.

‘The latest laboratory globe history for a silicon solar mobile is 26.7 %, which was also dependent on the IBC-SHJ thought but was extremely highly-priced to make. Our approach is shut to the ideal level.’

NEXTBASE researchers have also produced a prototype four-mobile x four-mobile solar module that has obtained 23.two % efficiency, which is between the highest silicon module efficiencies ever noted. Encouraged by these success, the job staff has produced a cost-helpful producing system that could make these kinds of modules for under EUR .275/watt, enabling energy technology at expenses similar to technology with normal Asian-made systems.

‘It will make Europe competitive in solar mobile producing,’ suggests Ding.

Electricity-tech improvements

Ding adds that the cells can make Europe’s power extra sustainable and safe. ‘The better efficiency fosters the transition to renewables as it provides extra power from lesser areas than similar less-productive cells,’ he clarifies, incorporating: ‘From an environmental and societal see, it is improved to make domestically.’

The IBC-SHJ technological innovation is essential to the extraordinary power conversion price. Metallic contacts in normal mass-generated solar technological innovation are on the front and back, squandering the solar power that is blocked by the metallic on the front. In contrast, back-contacted cells have all the connections at the back, so that they can seize solar power throughout their whole front surface, in addition to becoming aesthetically pleasing.

Present IBC-kind modules provide only to a top quality market and are highly-priced to make, according to Ding. The fourteen market and research associates in the NEXTBASE consortium changed types and procedures for the silicon wafers, the cells and the modules in this technological innovation to make them both equally extra productive and extra cost-helpful.

Ding clarifies that IBC-SHJ cells have complex structures. ‘There was no cost-competitive industrial way to make them.’

NEXTBASE member Meyer Burger Research AG produced an automated course of action for creating the cells cheaply. ‘This course of action was extremely effective and very simple,’ suggests Ding.

Pilot preparations

Ding thinks that NEXTBASE can raise producing and buyer desire in European photovoltaic technological innovation and make IBC-SHJ modules extra eye-catching to people. ‘The success are major to commercialisation of higher-efficiency PV modules dependent on subsequent-technology c-Si solar cells. Without having EU funding, the associates would not have labored together that closely,’ suggests Ding. ‘Everyone has an energetic desire in doing the do the job, even further than the job.’

The subsequent move will be to show that the NEXTBASE mobile can do the job in more substantial modules and to industrialise generation. The associates are organizing a job for a pilot line, led by Meyer Burger Research AG, which now has a patent on the mobile.

Nonetheless, scientific facts about the project’s improvements can be accessed on the NEXTBASE web page, which includes its cost and life-cycle influence evaluation, making it possible for other projects and firms to build further subsequent-technology solar technological innovation in Europe.