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RENERGI-Fremtidens rene energisystemer

Design and development of a novel concept for solar module manufacturing

Awarded: NOK 10.5 mill.

Project Manager:

Project Number:

193181

Project Period:

2009 - 2012

Partner countries:

The project is concerned with manufacturing technology for solar modules based on backside-contacted solar cells. The main objective is to significantly reduce the cost of manufacturing of solar based energy systems, and hence contribute to green energy p roduction. The manufacturing concept is based upon interconnect technology from Conpart (the mother company of Polymer Industries) and extensive know-how from high-throughput manufacturing of electronics, and the solar cell research experience of the Depa rtment of Solar Energy at the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE). To minimise both cost and waste, additive metallization technologies for reel-to-reel manufacturing of the printed wiring board (PWB) will be used. Advanced Pick&place technology develop ed for the electronics industry will be utilised. This will allow dicing the wafer into smaller units which have the combined benefit of reduced thermo-mechanical stress, better utilisation of in particular the single-crystal wafer, and more homogenous ce lls. Combined with backside contacted solar cells, the energy conversion efficiency is increased. The are some main technological challenges. One is to adapt and scale up existing equipment for reel-to-reel manufacturing of the PWB. Another is the interco nnect technology, where not least the short available mounting cycle time will be a challenge. It will also be very critical to choose design and solutions that focus on a ?global? optimisation of the module manufacturing, and not sub-optimise certain asp ects on the expense on others. There are a huge potential for module manufacturing of solar cells. The solar cell manufacturing is expected to reach 10 GW by 2010. Assuming a value adding of only 1 $/W in the module stage, this represents a value adding o f 10 billion $ worldwide.

Funding scheme:

RENERGI-Fremtidens rene energisystemer