The supply shortage, which has also affected polymer wraps for solar module manufacturing, naturally finds itself at the center of the 3rd combined TaiyangNews Market Survey on Backsheets and Encapsulation Materials. Apart from the obvious consequence – price hikes, this survey delves deep into techno-commercial developments in the backsheets and encapsulation materials segment.
In this survey, we cover a total of 12 companies and 90 products, of which 68 are backsheet models and 22 encapsulation films. It includes the major global manufacturers in this segment. Our survey also received inputs from leading component suppliers for backsheets and encapsulants.
The current market for backsheets has a plethora of choices – structures consisting of a variety of polymers. A typical backsheet is a 3-layered structure, with two protective layers sandwiching a film of PET core. And based on the chemistry of the protective layers, backsheets can be categorized into 2 segments – fluoropolymer based backsheets containing at least one fluoropolymer film and non-fluoropolymer based backsheets that are free from these halogen components. Similarly, the encapsulation segment is divided into EVA (Ethylene Vinyl Acetate) and non-EVA. The market survey includes brief descriptions of the products offered by the 12 companies listed (see Chapter 7) and tables with the key product specs (see Chapter 10).
In an interview with Cybrid, the leading backsheet supplier with strong ambition in encapsulation as well shares its views on the key trends in these two market segments (see Chapter 9).
During our different virtual conferences, we also covered the topic of backsheets and encapsulation, among others at our Reliable Module Design 2021 Conference and our Solar Innovations 2021 Conference with presentations from Jolywood, Coveme and Cybrid.