South Korea bets on tandem solar technologies

• The South Korean federal government has actually released a new roadmap to support R&D activities in the solar industry. The paper shows the country's solar manufacturing market might be motivated to go with high-efficiency and also pricey panels based upon tandem solar cells.

South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry as well as Energy (MOTIE) has released a brand-new roadmap for the residential solar module market that envisages a solid bank on high-efficiency as well as costly products such as panels based on tandem solar cells.

According to the file, residential solar manufacturers as well as research institutes expect tandem solar cell technology based on silicon and also perovskite to be one of the most encouraging candidate for PV items of the future generation. The Korean semiconductor as well as display markets, according to the MOTIE, may play a decisive duty in this transition by providing its know-how in silicon product and also thin movie development.

Public investments of around KRW 190 billion ($159.7 million) will be dedicated to study on tandem PV technologies over the following five years with the hope of reaching an efficiency of 26% by 2023 as well as also of 35% by 2030, the MOTIE specified. Moreover, it means to allot an additional KRW 25 million to develop a 100 MW R&D facility for screening of TOPCon, heterojunction and also tandem solar modern technologies.

Additionally, the MOTIE will allocate an additional KRW 98 million for solar research tasks. These consist of developing incorporated photovoltaics (BIPV) and also floating PV, to name a few.

The choice to bet on a high-grade and also pricey modern technology such as tandem PV responds to the very same reasoning that led the South Korean federal government to introduce in May brand-new regulations which will certainly see the carbon impact of solar energy projects considered when focusing on brand-new setups. The brand-new guidelines will resemble those used in France, where big scale solar tenders take low-carbon production right into account, in addition to the price developers settle on for the power generated. South Korea, like France, has a considerable nuclear power generation capability which will help the low-carbon efforts of residential solar panel suppliers.

According to current research from France, PV modules made with tandem solar cells will certainly need to reveal performances of 30% as well as use the very same lifetime and degradation price as typical crystalline panels if manufacturers wish to hit business manufacturing. According to the paper-- which assesses the prospective competition of tandem modules against crystalline silicon products-- commercial versions of the latter will certainly get to efficiencies of 22-24% by the end of the decade, as well as potentially 25% if interdigitated back-contact (IBC) heterojunction products get to commercial manufacturing.

In September 2019, scientists from South Korea's Ulsan Institute of Science and Technology demonstrated a brand-new technique of fabricating perovskite-on-silicon tandem gadgets, utilizing a clear conductive adhesive to integrate the two cells. The scientists have created tools with demonstrated efficiencies of 19.4%, and recommend methods to bring that over 24% using existing modern technology.