A consortium of European thin-film PV manufacturers and research institutes are working to advance copper, indium, gallium, and selenium (CIGS) solar development in a €5.9 million ($6.4 million) project. It aims to achieve 25% cell power conversion efficiency by improving manufacturing processes and scaling up from lab-sized bifacial devices to small outdoor-tested modules for a range of applications.
New research into bifacial, ultra-thin, semi-transparent and tandem CIGS solar cells is the focus of a €5.9 million million Horizon Europe project involving a consortium of 14 European companies and research groups.
The power conversion efficiency target is 25% in commercial production, which would take CIGS a step beyond the record efficiency for CIGS research cells, which is 23.6%, held by Evolar, a Swedish company that was recently acquired by First Solar.
“We will develop prototype modules for the listed application cases,” Sascha Sadewasser, principal investigator for the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, told pv magazine. “[The] core work is on bifacial aspects and how to exploit them in highly relevant applications”.
Other aspects of the project include life cycle analysis and costing, as well as establishing practices in line with circular economy concepts.
This post appeared first on PV Magazine.
