Download PDF - Pan Stanford Publishing
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Introduction to SolarPowerfortheWorld 17<br />
• Yingli Green<br />
• Suntech<br />
• Trina Solar<br />
• Canadian Solar<br />
• First Solar<br />
• Sharp<br />
• JA Solar<br />
• Jinko Solar<br />
• SunPower<br />
• Hanwha Solar (the new owner of Q-Cells)<br />
It has also to be realised that over 500,000 new jobs have been<br />
created in the last few years in PV, 120,000 each in the United<br />
States and Germany, and over 300,000 in the European Union. The<br />
detrimental effects of the PV industry on employment remained<br />
surprisingly limited.<br />
Progress in Solar Cell Efficiencies and Ground-Mounted PV<br />
Arrays<br />
In late 2012, a new efficiency record of 44% was announced.<br />
It was achieved by Solar Junction in San José, California, on a<br />
“multi-junction” cell of III–V compounds (GaAs and others) at a<br />
concentration of the light of 947 Suns. The measurement was<br />
confirmed by the National Laboratory NREL. This kind of cell has<br />
become attractive for the CPV ground-mounted PV plants that<br />
employ small mirror or lens concentrators; as they need high light<br />
concentration, two-axis tracking of the Sun with high precision is<br />
required. CPV plants find currently a lot of new interest. (I am<br />
member of the board of the Institute ISFOC in Spain, which is unique<br />
in specialising in CPV technologies and has several full-scale plants<br />
from around the world installed at its site in Puertollano for testing.)<br />
The efficiency for standard single-junction GaAs solar cells<br />
comes, for instance, at 23.5% from Alta Devices. Note that GaAs solar<br />
cells are preferred for most satellite applications in space; they are<br />
more radiation resistant than silicon cells.<br />
On mono-crystalline silicon cells, optimum efficiencies of<br />
up to 24% in production have been reached by SunPower