Canadian Solar Sets World Record Efficiency With P5 Casted Mono Solar Cells

Canadian Solar has set a new world record of 22.80 percent conversion efficiency for p-type large area multi-crystalline silicon solar cells.

Canadian Solar, one of the world’s largest solar power companies, has announced that its technology team has set a new world record of 22.80 percent conversion efficiency for p-type large area multi-crystalline silicon solar cells.

The record-setting P5 (casted mono) cell conversion efficiency was tested and certified by Germany’s Institute für Solarenergieforschung GmbH (ISFH) in September 2019. It surpasses the previous multi-crystalline cell efficiency world record of 22.28 percent which was also set by Canadian Solar in April, earlier this year.

Dr. Shawn Qu, chairman and chief executive officer of Canadian Solar expressed his delight on the achievement, that Canadian Solar broke the world record yet again.

“This is a milestone for our P5 technology development. It proves that our multi-crystalline silicon technology can achieve efficiencies very close to mono while still enjoying the cost advantage of multi. We remain focused on expanding our technology pipeline to provide our customers with the most LCOE-competitive products,” he said.

The firm has been developing and is commercially launching its P5 cell technology and solar module products. The 22.80 percent record efficiency multi-crystalline cell was fabricated utilising 157 mm x 157 mm (area 246.66 cm2) P5 silicon wafers and production-ready technologies such as MCCE (Metal Catalysed Chemical Etch) black-silicon texturing, selective emitter, multi-layer anti-reflection coating, advanced surface passivation, and optimised grid design and metallisation. Notably, the MCCE black-silicon texturing technology, originally developed and mass-produced by the company, was used to further improve cell performance.

The company has 1,422 patents granted, covering the North American, European and Asia-Pacific regions. In August this year, all of the Company’s cell capacity was upgraded to mono-PERC or multi-PERC. On the module product side, it has pioneered the GW-scale introduction of half-cut cell modules (Ku-series), bifacial modules (BiKu), multi-bus bar (MBB), 166 mm wafers (HiKu and BiHiKu) and shingled modules (HiDM).