Enhanced energy production in solar panels made from Elkem Solar Silicon®

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Elkem Solar produces a silicon feedstock material dedicated for use in the solar cell industry, Elkem Solar Silicon®, ESSTM , by a unique, proprietary low cost production method. This material has repeatedly been shown to be compatible with the manufactur e of efficient solar modules. Recently, field tests of two sets of solar modules made from ESSTM and reference silicon material made using a conventional production process were performed in India and Japan. The test sites are in regions with high tempera tures and high levels of irradiation. Although both sets of solar modules were nominally equally efficient, i.e. they exhibited the same efficiencies under standard test conditions, the actual power production during the field tests from modules based on ESSTM exceeded that of the reference panels by up to 12%, a highly significant fraction. This observation of enhanced energy production is interesting for Elkem Solar for the following three reasons: 1. It shows that ESSTM can be used to produce solar mo dules with at least equal, if not improved field performance, compared with silicon made using conventional routes. 2. It opens up the scientific question as to what features in the silicon material are the causes of this unusual effect and whether a sil icon production process can be designed in order to ensure that an enhancement of at least the same magnitude is observed every time. 3. It is relevant for an industry-wide challenge, namely that the use of solar energy in climates with the highest sola r resources is to a certain extent hindered today by lower performance of solar cells at high temperatures, a well-known effect. If this project demonstrates a pathway to abating this efficiency loss, it can have a large impact on the extent of solar elec tricity production in such climates in the future.