JinkoSolar Shares Attributes Of Tiger Module Series

JinkoSolar has released a white paper on its latest Tiger Series of module products. The white paper discusses various technical and application aspects of Tiger such as the technology platform’s core, its advantages in system design, energy generation performance and various applications scenarios.

Characterizing the Tiger series as a line of extension of “high energy density” module products, JinkoSolar has built this latest module series by combining several advanced module technologies – half cut, multi-busbar (MBB) and tiling ribbons. While 475 W is a higher module power reported for the Tiger series with an efficiency of 21.6%, the mainstream product from mass production has a power rating of 20.71%. The Tiger series is offered in monofacial as well as bifacial variants, in addition to an all black configuration. Below table summarizes the details of different module products offered in the Tiger range.

While half cells and MBB are well established technologies in module making, tiled ribbon is somewhat new. The approach eliminates the cell gaps and enables utilizing the total active module area for sun absorption (JinkoSolar provided details on its tiled ribbon technology in a TaiyangNews webinar on Advanced Module Technologies). It uses circular ribbons as in MBB and these ribbons are flattened at the overlap areas of cells. The module is also provided with special encapsulation material that can provide some kind of cushion for the overlap areas. Such a module construction naturally rises reliability concerns, and JinkoSolar’s white paper provides the results of reliability tests, which the Tiger series effortlessly passes.

More than the norm: The degradation associated with the Tiger series when subjected to IEC reliability tests is far lower than the norm, as published in a white paper from JinkoSolar.

The results indicate that the degradation with Tiger series after IEC/double IEC test is lower than 5%, which is required by the IEC standard. Interestingly, the results are better than normal modules. That means, in addition to superior electrical characteristic, the Tiger series also comes with better reliability, according to the white paper. Since Tiger series also uses larger wafers than M2, the module size also increases, and the product is also built with an atypical number of cells per module – 66 or 78 cells, which also contributes to the increase of the module size. Increasing the module size negatively affects the mechanical attributes of the module. However, JinkoSolar’s white paper underscores that Tiger modules retain good stability against mechanical load.

In the dynamic mechanical load test, 1,000 cycles are completed by dynamically applying ± 1000Pa pressure on the front surface of the module. The front-side power degradation rate displayed by Tiger series is 0.6%, and the back-side power degradation rate is 1.68%, both of which are far lower than the 5% required by IEC standard. In case of a static mechanical load test, the module is installed on the load test bench, the pressure on the front-side is 5400pa, the pressure on the backside is 2400pa, and the pressure is added 6 times and each time for I hour. The results are that the front-side power degradation on the front is 0.3%, and 1.82% on the back. Both the results are again considerably lower than IEC’s spec of 5%.