With all leading cell manufacturers now very active in PERC, in recent months it almost seems that we have reached a 'mass production phase' of new PERC records. At the editorial deadline for the new TaiyangNews PERC Technology 2018 Report end of May 2018, the PERC cell efficiency record stood at 23.95% – and it was being held by JinkoSolar, followed by LONGi.
We have summarized the recent PERC cell efficiency records from solar cell manufacturers for both mono and multicrystalline PERC cells and present them in a chart (see graph below).
PERC is mainly driven by monocrystalline silicon cell technology in today's market environment, also when it comes to record efficiencies. It really looks like companies are in a race for the PERC world record efficiency title. Interestingly, since we published our 2nd edition of our PERC report a year back, the efficiency record was broken 6 times, and mainly by two companies – LONGi and JinkoSolar. The month of October 2017 alone saw three new efficiency records – 22.71% from LONGi, 22.78% from JinkoSolar and 23.26 % by LONGi.
However, as we are approaching the 24% level, the record cells are not pure PERC cell anymore. JinkoSolar's current 23.95% efficiency record cell is a passivated contact technology adapted to the PERC platform. LONGi, which holds the rank for the second highest efficiency, says that its then 23.6% efficiency record was achieved with production tools in a pilot line. According to Hongbin Fang from LONGi, this efficiency level was obtained with improved fine line double printing, an optimized doping profile and grid design.
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