Generation 3: Improved performance at lower cost

Author

Cousins, Peter J. ; Smith, David D. ; Luan, Hsin-Chiao ; Manning, Jane ; Dennis, Tim D. ; Waldhauer, Ann ; Wilson, Karen E. ; Harley, Gabriel ; Mulligan, William P.

Author_Institution

SunPower Corp., San Jose, CA, USA

fYear

2010

fDate

20-25 June 2010

Abstract

This paper reports recent progress by SunPower Corporation to commercialize the Generation 3 product. The Generation 3 product has been designed to deliver both increased performance and lower manufacturing cost. Improved performance was achieved through optimization of the diffusion recombination losses. A conversion efficiency of 24.2% was achieved on a champion cell made on production equipment using a production wafer, 155.1cm² n-type CZ. This result was verified by the National Renewable Energy testing Laboratory. Modules made with Generation 3 cells were measured by NREL to have > 20.4% total area efficiency (>332W with 1.63m² modules). This paper presents the design changes before detailing the resulting performance.

Keywords

electrical products industry; optimisation; production equipment; renewable energy sources; solar cells; Generation 3 modules; Generation 3 product; National Renewable Energy Testing Laboratory; SunPower Corporation; diffusion recombination loss; efficiency 24.2 percent; manufacturing cost; optimization; production equipment; production wafer;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2010 35th IEEE

Conference_Location

Honolulu, HI

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-5890-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2010.5615850

Filename

5615850