Swiss production project pushes solar cell performance envelope
The plant was developed together with CSEM and with support from the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and the Canton of Neuchâtel.
High efficiency, high yield and low production costs are the advantages with which the process for producing highly efficient solar cells with heterojunction technology (HJT) will have a major impact on the solar market in the future.
The opening ceremony marked a first major milestone. The pilot production is the heart of the wide-ranging Swiss-Inno HJT project, which is promoted as part of the pilot, demonstrations and flagship program of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and the Canton of Neuchâtel.
The Meyer Burger technology group is a global equipment provider in the photovoltaic industry. As part of the project, the group is striving to optimize the efficient HJT coating technology in terms of performance, process and costs as well as to scale it up for industrial volume production.
With heterojunction technology, the Swiss company holds a trump card in the global market of the solar industry. After all, the technology offers two key advantages: HJT cells deliver higher solar energy yields and the innovative production process enables low cost mass production. Peter Pauli, CEO of the Meyer Burger Group said: "The industrialized manufacturing of high-performance solar cells is at the heart of photovoltaic production. The Swiss-Inno HJT project drives further development of a forward-looking, highly efficient cell technology. Working together with CSEM, we will further optimize the important economic advantages, such as lower production costs and higher energy yields at the same time and thus lower the costs of solar energy in the long term.”
The pilot plant has a production capacity of 600 kilowatts. The manufactured cells are built into modules and tested in both the laboratory and the field. At the same time, new technologies are developed at the plant, which make the solar cells even more efficient and production even more cost-effective. Several partners, including the PV-center of the CSEM, Meyer Burger Technology and both of their subsidiaries Meyer Burger Research and PASAN, are working together to achieve this.
"The Swiss-Inno HJT project is an example of technology transfer to industry," explained Christophe Ballif, VP of the PV-center at the CSEM. "The foundations for the innovative production process were developed at the Institute of Micro Technology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Thanks to the Meyer Burger Group and the support of the CSEM PV-center, we quickly brought the technology to industrial maturity. With the Swiss-Inno HJT project, we are taking a significant step further with the innovation and performance of PV cells."
If the additional optimizations are successful, the project partners expect a module efficiency of 21 percent and production costs below 0.6 CHF/Wp.
After the Swiss-Inno HJT project is completed, the pilot line will serve as a key platform for research and development to further enable a continuous improvement process under industrial production conditions and help bring new innovations to market maturity.
Related articles and links:
www.csem.ch
www.meyerburger.com/en/
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