Thin-film solar panel production is rapidly transitioning from small-scale and pilot lines to large-scale, industrialized manufacturing. For the industry to reduce the current cost of solar energy and achieve grid parity, the manufacturers must achieve significant improvements in cost and panel peformance.
Manufacturers are challenged to:
Maintain and continuously drive the efficiency of solar devices when moving from the lab to fab
Improve quality standards and productivity to achieve economically-efficient large scale production facilities
Ensure reliability of products for a life of 25 years in harsh environmental conditions
Thin-Film Solar Cell Performance Diagram
Working with its partners, BrightView has mapped the intricate dependencies of material and process parameters and their effects on cell performance. A simplified view of this complex relationship is captured in the Solar Cell Performance Diagram, presented here for a tandem silicon PV cell. By identifying critical paths and narrow process windows along this diagram, BrightView is able to provide comprehensive solutions that target the final cell performance.
Intelligent Thin-Film Process Optimization and Control
BrightView is the sole solution provider dedicated to thin-film PV manufacturing. With solutions developed to increase panel efficiency, improve line productivity and increase total peak power output of all types of thin-film PV production lines, manufacturers can achieve faster ramp-up, tighter product specifications and the improved bankability for projects that comes with true insight into process conditions. BrightView It provides continuous intelligent monitoring of all qualification, test and production panels and alerts you to detected process excursions, drifts and error conditions.
TF Panel Mapping
BrightView solutions enable mapping of key panel material characteristics as well as electrical and optical parameters. Such panel maps are essential in order to minimize energy and yield loss due to under-performing cells, hot spots and other non-uniformities. A unique data acquisition design with proprietary PV cell layer and stack analysis modules, combined with high-speed optical multiplexing allows configurable connectivity of multiple customized optical heads. The resulting architecture provides variable high-throughput high-density mapping of the panels, with motion provided either by the production conveyor or by external robots, enabling 100% mapping of production panels without added processing time.
Benefits:
Over 10% improvement of total MW output
Immediate real-time feedback and monitoring
Peace of mind with 24/7 process monitoring and reporting
Highly customizable analysis and control software
Payback period of less than 6 months
Strong Collaboration with Industry and Academic Partners
An ongoing collaboration with the renowned IMT - PV lab in Neuchatel, Switzerland, as well as leading thin-film manufacturing partners, has enabled BrightView to develop a game-changing technology for in-line metrology of thin-film PV.
Partnering with customers across the globe, BrightView has developed the expertise and know-how that encompass far more than process metrology. The solutions are developed with a process-centric approach, and are based on a strong understanding of material properties, cell and panel operation, the unique thin-film production process and panel reliability issues.
