Solar Power Cells, Hot Water, Energy, Collectors

GREEN DEALS: First Solar's new PV high

01.01.70

US solar giant First Solar has set a new world record for efficiency in cadmium-telluride (CdTe) photovoltaic (PV) modules, achieving 14.4 per cent total area efficiency, a 1 per cent improvement on the company's own prior record of 13.4 per cent. First Solar also holds the world record for CdTe solar cell efficiency, at 17.3 per cent. (Cell efficiency measures the proportion of light converted to energy in a single solar cell, while total area module efficiency measures light conversion across a production-size, multi-cell solar module, which the company says provides "a more realistic assessment of real-world performance" than cell efficiency.) Both records were achieved using commercial-scale manufacturing equipment and materials at the company's Perrysburg, Ohio factory.

"This considerable achievement supports our module efficiency roadmap and demonstrates our ability to convert our record-cell technology into ongoing module-level improvements," said First Solar's chief technology officer Dave Eaglesham, who announced the new milestone on Tuesday at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. "These records also underscore the tremendous ongoing potential of CdTe compared to silicon-based technologies," he said. Cadmium-telluride is the second most utilised solar cell material in the world, the first being silicon. The main upside of the technology is that it can be manufactured at lower costs than silicon-based solar panels, with FirstSolar using it to become the first manufacturer to produce solar cells for less than $US1 per watt. A downside, meanwhile, is the extremely high toxicity of Cadmium - although First Solar has also implemented the industry's first comprehensive, prefunded solar module collection and recycling program. The company has now manufactured more than 5GW of its advanced CdTe thin-film solar modules, using a continuous manufacturing process which transforms a sheet of glass into a complete solar module in under two-and-a-half hours.

Source: ElectroIQ