3/25/2023 0 Comments Perl medical abbreviation![]() Now that the standard concept achieves its limits and that technical know-how is available along the value chain to introduce PERC technology, it can constitute a new viable platform to manufacture high power and high efficiency solar panels.Īs anticipated by ITRPV, a body that gathers a set of manufacturers at the different steps of the value chain and that works on technology trends, the PERC technology will progressively take the biggest market share. During 30 years, the steady incremental improvements brought to the standard cell technology were economically and technically feasible. Indeed, industry must always compromise to achieve economically and technically viable concepts. Thus if PERC cell technology emerges now, it is mainly for economic reasons. The following graph sums up the historic quest of the solar industry to improve its technology.Īs stated earlier, there is always a gap between the performances achieved at the research level and what is achieved in mass production at the industrial level. Since then, the technology went through incremental improvement, with better pastes to form front contacts, thinner contact fingers, optimized anti reflective coating… It took almost 30 years to the industry to almost catch up with the efficiencies achieved at the research level. It is interesting to underline that the standard solar cell architecture has been in use since the middle of the 80’s. The two others competing technologies were the Back Contact technology, popularized by Sunpower, and the HIT technology commercialized by Panasonic. Because this concept of cell offered the best potential to reach high efficiency, the UNSW used it to achieve its multiple world records of efficiency that it brought close to 25%. First evocation of the technology traces back at the University of New South Walesin Australia in 1983 and the first paper has been published in 1989. The PERC architecture is actually not new at all. So this cell architecture is considered like presenting one of the best potential for producing high efficiency solar panels at competitive prices. And solar cell efficiency improvement is a contributor to the reduction of costs. We should always keep in mind that the Holy Grail is to improve efficiency while reducing costs at the same time. While there are more steps in the manufacturing process, the gain in efficiency enables costs decrease, also at the system level. With the current state of the technology, it is possible to achieve up to 1% absolute gain in efficiency. The main advantage of the PERC cell structure is that it enables manufacturers to achieve higher efficiencies than with standard solar cells which are reaching their physical limits. Even if initially not considered in the nomenclature of PERC, they are now usually considered as being part of the same familyĤ. Under the acronym PERC, we actually also find the solar cells technologies named PERL, PERT, PERF.
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