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Recently, Solartech Universal made headlines as part of solar machine maker Meyer Burger's heterojunction (HJT) solar cell and SmartWire (SWT) hardware announcements. Meyer Burger announced their new hardware manufacturing lines using a Solartech Universal solar panel. The 'champion module' hit 334.9W – a 20.5% solar panel efficiency. The cells used in the panel hit as high as 24.02% – higher than JinkoSolar's 23.45% (albeit with a different cell type).
Solartech Universal says this panel should be available in 2018 as the company works through the challenges of integrating the new manufacturing hardware into the current line (see Solartech Universal panel assembly video at end of article). The specification page for the panel family is available on the website – it peaks at 330W models, and notes being available soon.
[...] Meyer Burger calls heterojunction 'the Solar Cell of the Future (pdf).' An actual heterojunction solar cell just hit 26.6% efficiency in November. Again, well beyond, Jinko's 23.45%. This greater efficiency is partially because of additional layers of solar material – amorphous silicon – that grabs a different wavelength of light to make electricity.
Source: https://electrek.co/2017/12/19/florida-company-solar-cell-of-the-future-500w-heterojunction/
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday December 21 2017, @03:03AM (2 children)
I've done some PV installs but I forget the details- easy enough to look up. Peak power output spec. is with sun overhead, cool, clear day.
Yes, you get a bit more output with tracking systems, but there's one huge factor: when the sun is not directly overhead, there is more atmosphere between the sun and the panel. It may not seem significant, but it is because UV has more energy and you get much more energy from the UV component. The more atmosphere the light travels through, the less UV getting to the panel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @04:23AM (1 child)
Not all panels just use UV. But your point remains the same.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday December 23 2017, @04:18AM
Uh, thank you, I guess. But I never said that any panels "just use UV". Of all the photons coming from the sun, UV photons contain the most energy. In other words, photon-for-photon, a UV photon carries more energy than a visible, or infrared photon. The PV converts the photon energy into electrical energy. The more photon energy, the more electrical energy you get. When the sun is lower in the sky, the light has to travel through more atmosphere and UV is attenuated more than infrared. Infrared carries energy, but also heats the panels, which reduces their efficiency.