Looking back at the development of the PV industry, the technology update and iteration of the cell is the core. The three cell technologies that have been discussed more are Top-con, PERC and HJT. In terms of technical difficulty, Top-con and HJT are higher and PERC is lower. PERC has been used in a large number of mature applications in the industry, and the production cost is relatively low, while the efficiency improvement has also encountered a bottleneck. HJT is incompatible with the current production line and requires a lot of investment in new equipment.
Components are the only law of PV system design
For 2022Q1 PV system component selection, four mass-produced 182/210 mainstream module products were selected for comparison, respectively, 182 N-type 610W and 565W, 210 P-type 660W, 182 P-type 540W. In terms of module efficiency and bi-facial rate, the N-type advantage is obvious. In terms of positive short-circuit current, there is not much difference between 182 module N-type and P-type, while 210 module obviously has higher short-circuit current. In terms of decay rate, the first year decay rate of N-type modules is only 1%, and the subsequent yearly decay rate is only 0.4%, which is much better than P-type modules.
Component selection economics analysis—N-type has obvious effect on project cost reduction.
Take the project of 120MW on DC side (100MW on AC side, capacity allocation ratio 1.2) in the in situ of Shanpo Terrace in Guanzhong area of Shaanxi Province, for example, the design selects fixed adjustable bracket longitudinal two-row layout, small bracket, pre-stressed pipe pile and string inverter. Scheme ABD is chosen to compare N-type 610W, N-type 565W and P-type 540W respectively.
In terms of land cost, the A and B schemes with N-type modules can save 85 and 89 mu of land respectively. In terms of bracket arrangement, module length has a greater impact on bracket cost than width, which brings a significant decrease in the number of bracket sets for N-type modules. In terms of the number of stakes, longer strings bring fewer stakes.
Component selection economics analysis—N-type has obvious effect on project cost reduction.
Take the project of 120MW on DC side (100MW on AC side, capacity allocation ratio 1.2) in the in situ of Shanpo Terrace in Guanzhong area of Shaanxi Province, for example, the design selects fixed adjustable bracket longitudinal two-row layout, small bracket, pre-stressed pipe pile and string inverter. Scheme ABD is chosen to compare N-type 610W, N-type 565W and P-type 540W respectively.
In terms of land cost, the A and B schemes with N-type modules can save 85 and 89 mu of land respectively. In terms of bracket arrangement, module length has a greater impact on bracket cost than width, which brings a significant decrease in the number of bracket sets for N-type modules. In terms of the number of stakes, longer strings bring fewer stakes.
Economic analysis of module selection – n-type significantly improves project ROI.
Taking the P-type 540W module as the benchmark, three different price differences of the same version of N-type 565W module are used for comparison analysis. Considering the advantages of high bi-facial rate, low attenuation and temperature coefficient of N-type, a conservative estimate is made according to 2% increase in power generation hours. The selected N-type mu production power generation will be significantly improved, and the static investment will be reduced to different degrees without considering energy storage.
In 2022, N-type Top-con modules will have a mass production scale of tens of gigawatts, which will bring a very big technical improvement and iteration for module selection at the application end. N-type modules have obvious leading advantages in BOS cost, mu production capacity and financial evaluation, and their future performance at the application end is very worth looking forward to.