Astronergy’s Solar Cell Efficiency Improvement

• Astronergy has revealed its highest average conversion efficiency for n-type TOPCon 3.0 solar cell on the pilot test line as 25.85%
• The highest average efficiency of its TOPCon cell in mass production now exceeds 25.6%
• The company previously announced its aim to scale up the average n-type TOPCon cell efficiency in pilot line to 26% by 2023-end

Chinese solar cell and module producer Astronergy has announced achieving 25.85% as highest average power conversion efficiency for its n-type TOPCon 3.0 solar cell pilot test line, while its average efficiency of the TOPCon cell in mass production now exceeds 25.6%.

The Chint Group company says while the 25.85% is the highest average efficiency of its TOPCon cell in the pilot line, in June 2023 it reached 25.81% average mass production efficiency on the pilot line. The maximum power output of 182/72 format solar panels also reached more than 591W. This is verified by a 3^rd party, it added.

Astronergy's TOPCon 3.0 technology uses optimized high-efficiency surface cleaning, Boron-LDSE, back passivation and new metallization technologies, that helped the company report 25.62% average efficiency for its n-type TOPCon cell. By 2023-end, it targets to scale it up to an average efficiency of 26% the same (see China PV News Snippets).

In December 2020, Astronergy established its TOPCon solar cell pilot line with an efficiency of 24%, and later in July 2022 started rolling out its TOPCon cell and modules at the Haining Intelligent Manufacturing Base. Haining is Astronergy's largest production base with an installed capacity of 17 GW cell and 24 GW module capacity.

Astronergy is on TaiyangNews Top Solar Modules Listing with its Astro N5 modules that's based on n-type TOPCon 182/144 format with an efficiency of 22.5% and 580W yield. The list also carries its p-type PERC cell module Astro 6 Semi with 21.6% efficiency and 670W output (see Top Solar Modules Listing—June 2023).

Recently, Astronergy's Technical Manager EMEA Ibrahim Desouky participated in TaiyangNews Virtual Conference on Global PV System Technology Trends H1/2023 where he talked at length about the company's N7 module technology for which it uses a wafer size of 182mm x 191mm. He shared the company's plans to grow its total cell capacity to 81 GW by 2025-end up from 13 GW at the end of 2022, while growing module capacity from 20 GW now to 100 GW in 2025 (see Review: Day 1—Global PV System Technology Trends H1/2023).