REC, a leading manufacturer in the European solar panel industry and one of the world’s largest producers of polysilicon and wafers for solar applications, and ECN (Energy research Center of the Netherlands) have together made the world’s first polycrystalline solar panels with 17.0 percent efficiency.
The previous world record was 16.5 percent
REC produced the polycrystalline solar wafers from the latest wafer production lines in Norway. What sets the wafers apart are a very low level of impurities and dislocation densities, achieved by using REC’s latest generation wafer furnaces.
ECN produced the cells and assembled the record breaking solar panel.
“We are pleased that our efforts in wafer technology development have allowed us to achieve this world record. Our previous joint REC/ECN record measurement was at 16.4 percent efficiency, and significant effort has gone in to reaching the 17 percent milestone”, said SVP and CTO Erik Sauar.
While monocrystalline solar panels broke the 17% barrier some time ago, the same milestone for polycrystalline solar panels has been a challenge to researchers for many years.
The cells of a monocrystalline solar panel are cut from a chunk of silicon that has been grown from a single crystal and as a result, are more efficient in converting the sun’s rays to electricity. Polycrystalline cell material is grown from multifaceted silicon crystalline material. Slightly more surface area is required to generate the same amount of power due to flaws in the material . Polycrystalline panels are cheaper and best suited to applications where space is not severely limited.
