Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

• Popular Technical Papers

  • Overview of automation in the photovoltaic industry
  • Understanding moisture ingress and packaging requirements for photovoltaic modules
  • Evaluation of encapsulant materials for PV applications
  • Inline processing of crystalline silicon solar cells: the holy grail for large-scale manufacturing?
  • PV sector outlook: an analyst’s perspective

• Featured Technical Papers

  • Transparent conducting oxide deposition techniques for thin-film photovoltaics
  • Comprehensive and advanced quality assurance measures for optimal yields from PV power plants
  • Surface passivation of silicon solar cells using industrially relevant Al2O3 deposition techniques
  • Influence of a-Si:H deposition temperature on thermal stability of a-Si:H/SiNx:H stacks
  • Integrated loops: a prerequisite for sustainable and environmentally-friendly polysilicon production

Climate change, oil shortage, green energy, energy security – these are some of the global ‘mega’-topics currently dominating the agenda in the news, in politics and in private lives. One of the industries that has most profited from the ever-growing consciousness about the need to de-carbonize current energy use is the photovoltaic industry. With this economic background, the photovoltaic industry has experienced impressive growth rates in the last decade and is expected to grow at 30% per year over at least the next couple of years. Since its upswing, it has become a multibillion dollar industry and subject to speculation on stock exchanges worldwide. At the beginning of the solar boom there was a shortage of available silicon to produce wafers and cells. One response of the industry was the quest and the use of alternative thin-film materials to produce solar cells. The reaction of the silicon supply industry was (and actually still is) the expansion of silicon production facilities, including specialized solar-grade silicon production facilities. Despite a much more relaxed outlook on the silicon supply-demand ratio, investments in solar silicon production facilities is predicted to amount to more than €4.0 billion by 2010. This is slowly reducing the supply gap, enabling photovoltaic producers to invest heavily in new production capacities.

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