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With its 150-W module the US cell and module manufacturer AstroPower is following the trend towards larger modules. The special feature of this new product is the large, pseudo round cells. These monocrystalline cells, however, now have diameters of 200 mm.
In general round cells have an advantage in that their size is nearly exactly the size of the ingots grown by Czochralski-pullers. Relative to square cells, almost no waste is produced. AstroPower saves even more production costs, though, since they receive the 200 mm wafers directly from the semiconductor industry’s waste material. No ingots have to be cut into slices with wire-saws; instead the integrated circuits have to be etched off from the wafer surface. »Modules with round cells have the lowest cost per watt,« explains AstroPower’s director of communications Michael Right. The reason, however, for the domination of square crystalline cells lies in the miserable module efficiencies – in AstroPower’s case 10.3 percent – of modules with round cells, since the round shape allows no tight filling of the available module area. ms For technical details see page 30. AstroPower Michael
Schmela
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