TaiyangNews has published its Solar Module Innovations 2022 report during Intersolar Europe. For the current TaiyangNews Report on Solar Module Innovations, essentially the 5th edition, we looked at more than 400 products from 27 companies. As in the past, the report provides a status update on the 3 important parameters of the modules — efficiency, power and CTM power ratio.
As the average efficiency of solar modules has been steadily increasing over the years, we have raised our minimum qualification criterion for product inclusion in our report list to 21.5%. Unlike last year, when high efficiency cell technology was not a prerequisite to be part of the game, the 21.5% hurdle this year puts the cell technology to the front and center more than anything else.
In our previous reports, we have extensively covered the fundamentals of advanced module technologies such as larger wafers, half cell, MBB, bifacial and reduced/no gap technologies. In the current edition, we provide a brief summary along with the recent developments. The final section of the report provides an overview of the module products categorized into above mentioned 5 applications.
For a manufacturer, the main aim of the larger module configurations, be it with larger wafer sizes or just more number of cells, is to find their way into utility applications. And bifacial is often part of the technology blend for such PV panels. For the residential market, high efficiency, small size and aesthetics are what matter. C&I, which sits between utility and residential, is the segment with the least count of products, as manufacturers are more inclined to broaden their application band to tag their products as “C&I and utility” and “residential and C&I”, which are also covered in the report.
