Solar technology equipment provider Despatch Industries has completed high-volume production testing of its new Safire firing furnace at monocrystalline PV cell manufacturer Nice Sun PV Co. in China.
In the production testing environment, Nice Sun was able to achieve a 0.1% absolute improvement in overall efficiency on a baseline product and up to 0.135 on some product types, according to Despatch. Additional Safire benefits achieved during testing included reducing wafer scrap by close to 1% and reducing low efficiency cells by 4%.Â
The firing process is critical because it is the last step in the cell manufacturing process and has a significant impact on cell efficiency, Despatch says. The Safire includes thermal profile tailoring features that are designed to enable the short time-above temperature and distributed heating capabilities required for state-of-the-art metallization and passivation layers.
