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Mexico has also established itself as one of the front-runners in the ever-growing PV market with an increasing number of large and key industry players transferring their business to the region.

Oregon is on pace to be the largest photovoltaic producing state in North America in 2009, with more than 600 MW of annual production capacity. Solar manufacturers are flocking to Oregon for low energy costs, skilled silicon workforce, environmental tax incentives and the overall premium value Oregonians put on stewardship. SolarWorld, Solaicx and Peak Sun have all set up shop in Oregon in the past year.

The Sixtron SunBox is a silane-free coating system for front-side antireflective and passivation coating processes in c-Si solar cell manufacturing. Using a unique silicon carbide-based chemistry, the SunBox is a “plug & play” solution for crystalline silicon cell manufacturing lines that matches the efficiency of today’s most advanced antireflective and passivation coating systems while completely eliminating the significant safety, reliability and cost issues associated with pyrophoric silane gas.

Tigo Energy has developed a power electronics system for PV solar projects which distributes key elements of instrumentation, control and maximum power point tracking to the module.  The system provides optimal power harvest from each module while not introducing additional conversion loss or significant cost increases relative to today’s centralized BOS electronics.  By placing a small amount of electronics on each panel, Tigo Energy eliminates the system impact of underperforming modules (made weaker by high temperature; dust & debris; aging; clouds; or shade) and thus harvests up to 20% additional energy.  This significantly reduces levelized cost of energy (LCOE) and project payback period.

There are several steps in the production process of solar cells which are crucial for cell efficiency. Therefore the necessity arises to effectively control quality inline. VINSPEC SP is designed to provide reliable contactless inline quality measurement for thickness of antireflection coating at PV-wafers directly after the coating process.

The first step of the automated solar module production process is the soldering of the solar cells in to a string. During the feeding of the cells our machine vision system VINSPECsolar inspects the cells for optical quality criteria. This inspection takes place before the integration of the cells in to a module. The machine vision system VINSPECsolar records the exact position of the cell and calculates the difference between the target and current position. The corrected coordinates are submitted to the handling system. Thereby optimal handling of the cell is guaranteed. Additionally VINSPECsolar inspects the shape of the cell and the quality of the printing on the front side.  Solar cells of a poor quality and breakages can be picked out without delaying production. VINSPECsolar   reliable detects all relevant faults criteria and classifies them. VINSPECsolar provides a critical contribution to high product quality and distinct classification.

The small compact foot print, immense product flexibility and a highly advanced induction close loop soldering process, make the Komax Xcell 3400 Stringer a key machine in helping the Crystalline Solar Industry reach grid parity.

ChemGuard refill technology (CG1000) has been developed by Air Products to substantially reduce c-Si cell manufacturing costs.  The system eliminates the need to replace empty chemical (POCl3) containers residing inside the diffusion furnaces, which use this chemical to dope the Si wafer with N-type material.

Alpha® PV Ready Ribbon™ is a flux coated, solder ribbon used to link together solar cells in Photovoltaic Module Assembly. It’s unique feature is the patented chemistry and technology used to flux coat the ribbon, thereby eliminating the need to apply flux separately during the tabbing and stringing process.

Together with the Fraunhofer IPA in Stuttgart, ACI-ecotec GmbH & Co. KG developed the first wet wafer separator. That system, now on its 3rd revision and currently in use with key wafer manufacturers globally, has proven to be an economical, fast and reliable solution for separating pre-cleaned, raw wet solar wafers from the wire saw, for inline or batch processing. The system is designed and has proven to offer, fast, safe and reliable wet wafer separation offering a very fast return of investment for automation at this crucial wafer handling step. There are 24 separator units integrated into batch and inline solutions since 2005 to customers in Europe, US and ASIA.