TaiyangNews TOP Solar Modules Analysis Report looks into progress of solar modules in each cell technology. It is evident that module efficiency is mainly driven by the cell technology, and companies often rely on advanced cell architectures such as IBC, TOPCon, and HJT. The graph above  summarizes the top efficiency product in all commercial cell structures (See Growth In High Efficiency Solar Modules).

Historically, IBC has always been considered the efficiency leader among the commercially offered modules; which is also reflected in our list from the beginning. Over the last 2.5 years, the commercial module efficiency has increased by 1.5% absolute. At the beginning of 2024, AIKO represented the highest efficiency of 24%, which it retained until it broke its own record in the month of May. Its latest Comet series product features an efficiency of24.2%, putting it directly at the top. As for 2023, the top IBC efficiency position was held by both LONGi and Maxeon with both their modules featuring 22.8% efficiency. In March, Aiko’s module with23.6% efficiency took the lead and it strengthen edits position further with a 24% product in June 2023, staying on top through December 2023. Looking back to 2022, Maxeon represented the highest efficiency module product with an efficiency of22.7% in the IBC category until March 2022. It again increased the efficiency of its module to 22.8%, continuing its leadership position until September. In October 2022, LONGi introduced its Hi-MO 6 product with an efficiency of 22.8%, sharing the top spot with Maxeon till February 2023.

The top commercial module efficiency among TOPCon products has increased by only 0.27% absolute. The top efficiency increased once in the first half of 2024 from 22.65% at the beginning of the year represented by JinkoSolar, which was first superseded by Tongwei with a 22.8% product in February. The very next month in March, Astronergy also commercialized a product with the same efficiency. The duo held the top efficiency position for TOPCon until the end of the monitoring period for this report – H1 2024. During 2023, JinkoSolar was the TOPCon efficiency leader for the entire year with a 22.65% efficiency product, a place it claimed from Jolywood in September 2022. In fact, Jolywood was the top seed with an efficiency of 22.53% in the TOPCon segment from the beginning of 2022, maintaining it until August 2023, when JinkoSolar surpassed it with the 22.65% product, which has not changed since. February 2023.In the case of HJT, the top efficiency has been represented by Huasun, the pioneer of this technology, for about 2 years out of the 2.5-year evaluation period. The top HJT efficiency has remained unchanged during the first half of 2024since September 2023, which was when Huasun hit an efficiency of 23.02%, the highest for any HJT module. Reaching this number also earned it a spot among the top 3 ranks of all modules. The top HJT module until August 2023 was Huasun’s 22.53%efficiency module, which entered our listing in June2022. Looking further back, it was initially REC that had an HJT module with the highest efficiency of22.2% at the start of our TOP MODULES ranking in2022. In April 2022, Huasun also started offering HJT modules with the same efficiency. Canadian Solar began promoting its HJT module with an efficiency of 22.5% in May 2022, which was replaced the next month by the abovementioned 22.53% module from Huasun. The top efficiency for HJT has increased by0.82% absolute in the last 2.5 years, making it 2ndamong the technology streams, after IBC.

For PERC, the top efficiency has remained at 21.7% for most of this report’s monitoring period except for the month of January 2022, when the top PERC efficiency of 21.6% was shared by 5 companies –Canadian Solar (CSI), Risen, Suntech, Talesun and Trina Solar. The following month, LONGi increased it to 21.7% and held the top spot until June 2022.In July, however, Risen also introduced a product with similar efficiency, thereby sharing PERC’s top position until November 2022. In December, while the top efficiency remained at 21.7%, CSI joined the club. The status quo was maintained for the next 2 months, after which Tongwei, a leading cell and silicon supplier, also started offering a PERC module with 21.7%. In April 2023, DAS Solar joined the list, which remained unchanged for the next 2 months. In July, Suntech moved in, and the 6 companies (CSI,LONGi, Risen, Tongwei, DAS Solar, and Suntech) continued with the same efficiency to the end of2023 and also through the first half of 2024.

TaiyangNews TOP MODULES H1-2024 report summarizes the key findings from over 30 editions published between early 2022 and June 2024. Download the free report here.