"BEIJING, Jan 6 (Reuters) - China's Trina Solar has established a new world record for the conversion efficiency of a certain type of solar module," the company reported on Monday.
Trina's large surface area n-type fully passivated heterojunction (HJT) modules achieved an efficiency of 25.44% in laboratory tests, as confirmed by the Fraunhofer CalLab in Germany, a solar research organization.
Passivation involves masking defects on a solar cell's surface, whereas cell efficiency indicates the proportion of solar energy transformed into usable electricity. Enhancing cell efficiency can lead to a reduction in the required solar installation space and costs.
Professor Martin Green at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, whose laboratory held the solar cell efficiency record for many years, highlighted the potential of HJT solar technology. He noted that efficiency is crucial in the long term and that technological advancements often lead to cost reductions.
Trina's chairman and CEO Gao Jifan expressed the company's commitment to expanding research and development in passivated solar technology to sustain its technological edge.
HJT technology, while accounting for a relatively small share of the market currently, is projected by solar consultancy InfoLink to represent 7% of high-efficiency solar cell capacity in 2024, increasing to 8% in 2025 and 9% in 2026. TopCON cells are anticipated to dominate the market over the next five years.
Trina mentioned that, aside from marking a breakthrough in HJT technology, the results signify a new achievement in the photoelectric conversion efficiency of single-crystalline silicon solar cell modules.