Solar Power World

Solar cell manufacturing with robots: The right fit for the right ‘bot’

The U.S. has set a goal to reach grid parity (the point where solar electricity is equal to grid electricity) by 2015. Yet, other nations claim to have reached it last year. No matter what your thoughts are on regulatory involvement, it’s clear there will be a resurgence in investment, development, and innovation within the PV manufacturing community throughout the world. The resurgence will largely be driven by technology. The Adept Cobra SCARA Robot (Selective Compliance... Read More

A little about a company that does a lot

I recently came across an interesting solar company, California-based Newport. The company started off in test and measurement devices for solar and now makes equipment for manufacturing, including spectra-physics lasers for solar cell processing. Also, the company’s industrial applications lab works to evaluate and develop laser process speedometers. They also offer integrated solutions, including the SolarYX family of  automated scribe tools. Here’s a video to... Read More

Automated Solar Wafer Quality Sorter Sorts Wafers Based on PV Performance

BT Imaging Pty Ltd (BTi)  announced a product for qualifying the electrical quality of as-cut wafers in production. The QS-W1, the industry’s first automated electrical wafer quality sorter, enables photovoltaic manufacturers to sort and reject as-cut wafers based on PV performance and maximize solar cell yield and efficiency.  Utilizing BTi’s proprietary second-generation patented photoluminescence (PL) imaging technology, the QS-W1 is ten times faster than previous... Read More

Has Light Induced Degredation In Solar Cells Met Its Match?

Sixtron Advanced Materials introduced its patent-pending Silexium™ technology, an antireflective passivation coating that nearly eliminates Light Induced Degradation (LID) in solar cells. LID is a well known issue for solar cell and module manufacturers, and LID reduces the efficiency of modules in the field by up to 5% in the first few hours of exposure to the sun, thus significantly reducing the net energy harvest. Sixtron has demonstrated that solar cells with a Silexium... Read More