The significant lag between PERC solar cell technology being developed in the laboratory and the 20-odd years before it made its way into mainstream commercial production is often cited as being an example of the, at times, glacial speed solar technology goes from lab to fab.
However this may not be the case today, argued Heraeus Andreas Liebheit, who noted that a situation of vast oversupply in the market and huge debts is unlikely to return in the near future.
Slowly the companies are coming back to zero profit or tiny positive profit, said Liebheit. I think now the development is now systematic and more sustainable so we believe companies do have regular money to reinvest in new technologies.
The Elevator Pitch award at the 2016 Future PV Forum was won by Swedens Sol Voltaics and the companys Invar Aberg is featured in the video from the event below.
The Future PV Forum is an event hosted by pv magazine and sponsored by Heraeus.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.