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

The PV industry has seen some incredible growth in the last five to eight years. This growth is essential in order to fulfill the challenging targets this industry has set itself to ensure it becomes an economical viable alternative energy source. A negative result of this growth, however, is the inefficient supply chain, where there is a lack of balance between demand and supply. The industry is going from one bottleneck to another. What is the impact of such inefficiencies on the  supplier/manufacturer relationship? In this article, we collect information from short interviews of a number of fab managers in the wafer, cell and module domain, and try to answer this question.

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