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PV panels are one of the main components of a solar photovoltaic plant. PV panels convert the sun's radiant energy into direct current electricity.

There are many types of solar PV panels:

 

  • 1)  Panels made of flat silicon PV elements,
  • 2) Solar panels composed of cascaded PV elements,
  • 3) Tandem solar cell solar panels etc.
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Currently, PV panels composed of planar silicon solar cells have gained widespread industrial use, which are made on the basis of silicon composed of monocrystalline and polycrystalline molecules.

The majority of flat silicon PV panels are monocrystalline silicon panels, which are mainly manufactured with PERC and TOPCON technologies.

The efficiency of traditional photovoltaic panels available in the market has currently reached about 22%. The cell technologies for those panels are PERC, IBC, HTJ. Contact passivation of a wide range of different cell structures has been of recent interest, particularly TOPON (Tunnel Oxide Passited Contact) cell technology.

The idea of TOPCON technology is that the metal does not come into direct contact with the wafer. TOPCON has an N-Type Silicon substrate and a thin tunneling oxide is applied, followed by a layer of highly doped with n or p poly silicon that contacts the metal at the ends. These tunneling oxide blocks one type of carrier and thus they are called passivating contacts. Compared to the Heterojunction technology (HJT) which has both amorphous and crystalline thin film the manufacturing process is completely different compared to TOPCN technology which is just one upgrade from the PERC structure by just adding a passivation oxide layer. By changing the substrate material from P-Type silicon to N-Type silicon material the existing PERC line in the market can be upgraded to TOPCON structure by just adding the tunneling passivation layer. This means there are capital/manufacturing costs compared to other technologies like HJT /IBC (interdigitated back contact) which requires a different type of architecture, which will be lower.

N-type TOPCON solar panels have a number of advantages over p-type PERC technology solar panels technology:

- The efficiency of TOPCON panels is 22%-22.8%, and in the case of PERC panels, 20-21.1% are widely used in the market. Therefore, a 5-8% larger power plant can be installed in the same area.

- Degradation of TOPCON panels is maximum 1% in the first year, up to 0.4% per year in the next 29 years, and in the case of PERC panels - up to 3% in the first year and 0.5-0.8% per year for the remaining 29 years,

- Temperature coefficient of Pmax of TOPCON panels is maximum 0.3%/oC, and in case of PERC panels - 0.36-0.4%/oC.

Solar House offers monofacial and bifacial solar panels of both PERC and TOPCON technologies. Bifacial PV panels provide 5-15% additional annual electrical energy generation compared to monofacial PV panels, depending on the characteristics of the installation site.