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IEC Shines Spotlight
Popularity of Wind Power Puts Greater Emphasis on Wind Turbine Gearbox Standards |
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Come join us at these upcoming events: Aug. 27-29 Sept. 17-20 Sept. 30-Oct. 2 Oct. 21-26 Oct. 29-Nov. 2 Nov. 6-9
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IEC Shines Spotlight on Importance of Photovoltaic Standards
“Because of the tremendous growth in photovoltaics, the polysilicon that we need and the purity that we need is in short supply because the semiconductor industry is wanting to get back to what they were using before they had a slump in sales about five to seven years ago. At that time, the photovoltaic industry was taking up all the slack,” says Howard Barikmo, secretary of the IEC’s Technical Committee 82, which develops standards for solar photovoltaic energy systems. “But now the semiconductor industry is growing, and they want their share back, and as a result, there’s a tremendous shortage of polysilicon material. And in order to build a factory to produce polysilicon, it will take three years and about $500 million to build a 5,000-ton-per-year plant.” While the higher prices of polysilicon are attracting more interest in producing the product, Barikmo points out that continuous growth of the industries demanding polysilicon will probably keep it in short supply for five to 10 more years. Because of this, members of the solar power industry are looking for alternative solutions. Thin-film photovoltaics are one type of technology showing promise. While thin film refers to various types of technologies, such as amorphous silicon, all are characterized by a much more limited use of silicon than the industry-leading crystalline photovoltaic cells. But it’s not a perfect technology. “The disadvantage there is that the efficiencies aren’t as great. Let’s say you want to build a 100-watt module. If you used amorphous silicon, because its efficiency is approximately 6 percent while the crystalline device’s efficiency is 15 percent to 22 percent, the amorphous one has to be at least three times as big as the crystalline structure,” Barikmo says. Despite the efficiency disadvantage, the thin-film industry is taking off. And to support growing interest in the technology, Technical Committee 82 will soon be releasing the second edition of its standard for design qualification and test approval for thin-film terrestrial photovoltaic modules, IEC 61646. The group is also working on another standard designed to support an increasingly popular technology that minimizes the need for silicon: concentrator photovoltaics. Using lenses and mirrors to focus sunlight onto photovoltaic cells, concentrator devices are much more efficient than even crystalline arrays—and therefore require less silicon to generate the same amount of power. But despite the fact that concentrator technology is now being deployed, there hasn’t been a standard available dedicated to photovoltaic concentrators and receivers—until this year. Technical Committee 82 will soon be releasing the first edition of a new standard designed to provide guidelines regarding safety, photovoltaic performance and environmental reliability tests for photovoltaic concentrator technology. Technical Committee 82 is also working on developing and revising a number of other standards as well. This spring, it released the second edition of its best-selling standard for reference solar devices, IEC 60904-2. The group has a number of other documents in the works. Why is the group so busy? Barikmo attributes the considerable activity to the growing interest in solar power. “We’ve been in existence for 20 years as a technical committee. But the growth of photovoltaics is taking off like gangbusters and there are many manufacturers that are coming in and standards for these things are especially important when you have new companies such as those from China entering the marketplace. A large number of the manufacturers over there do indeed want to build good products, so they will adhere to the standards that we are writing,” he says.
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Inverness Way East • Englewood, CO 80112-5776 • USA |
The solar power industry is growing rapidly—so rapidly, in fact, that it may be a victim of its own success. Today, manufacturers of crystalline photovoltaic cells, which represent the vast majority of photovoltaic cells available on the market, are dealing with a significant bottleneck: a limited supply of polysilicon. Key to the production of both semiconductors and crystalline photovoltaic devices, polysilicon is in high demand as both industries that use the product continue to grow. 