High-performance solar modules set new industry standards

Mey­er Burg­er Tech­nol­o­gy Ltd unveiled at an online prod­uct pre­miere on its web­site and social media chan­nels its new high-per­for­mance solar mod­ules. A record­ing is avail­able on the com­pa­ny’s web­site as well as on the YouTube and Face­book chan­nels. Three patent-pro­tect­ed prod­uct vari­ants were pre­sent­ed, all of which man­u­fac­tured using the pro­pri­etary heterojunction/SmartWire tech­nol­o­gy in the com­pa­ny’s own pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties in Germany. 

Accord­ing to the guid­ing prin­ci­ple “The best. From here. For tomor­row”, the con­cern is set­ting new indus­try stan­dards with its new solar mod­ules in terms of per­for­mance, ori­gin and sustainability.

“We opti­mize our solar mod­ules for max­i­mum ener­gy yield. They bring deci­sive dif­fer­ences com­pared to con­ven­tion­al prod­ucts. The next-gen­er­a­tion solar cells, which we inter­con­nect with our pro­pri­etary SmartWire inter­con­nec­tion tech­nol­o­gy, enable our cus­tomers to achieve up to 20 per­cent high­er ener­gy yield on the same roof area.”

 — Moritz Borgmann, respon­si­ble for glob­al sales and mar­ket­ing as Man­ag­ing Director

The sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er ener­gy yield over the ser­vice life is enabled by a top-class mod­ule con­ver­sion effi­cien­cy of up to 21.8 per­cent. On top, their mod­ules pro­duce sig­nif­i­cant­ly more ener­gy from each watt-peak. For exam­ple, the mod­ules lose only very lit­tle per­for­mance due to high tem­per­a­ture, low-light con­di­tions or non-per­pen­dic­u­lar inci­dence of light. 

Borgmann not­ed that there is only one prod­uct fea­ture in which the com­pa­ny is fol­low­ing the stan­dard: “We achieve this indus­try-lead­ing ener­gy yield and up to 400 watt-peak mod­ule pow­er with­out hav­ing to make the mod­ules ever larg­er, as our com­peti­tors do. This allows installers to make the most of their cus­tomers’ roofs and to work with mod­ules of famil­iar size and man­age­able weight.” 

The com­pa­ny ini­tial­ly offers the three prod­uct vari­ants Mey­er Burg­er White, Black and Glass in the rooftop mar­ket for res­i­den­tial and small com­mer­cial cus­tomers. These solar mod­ules fea­ture a homo­ge­neous “full cell” appear­ance, even though half cells are used. Due to the pro­pri­etary SmartWire inter­con­nec­tion tech­nol­o­gy, the “Mey­er Burg­er Black” in par­tic­u­lar appears uni­form­ly black. The heterojunction/SmartWire tech­nol­o­gy also effec­tive­ly pre­vents so-called “micro­c­racks”, a major cause of ubiq­ui­tous per­for­mance degra­da­tion. In addi­tion, the com­pa­ny employs a spe­cial back­sheet that sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­es the robust­ness and dura­bil­i­ty of the mod­ules and thus also their life­time ener­gy yield. All vari­ants there­fore exhib­it supe­ri­or longevi­ty, under­pinned with per­for­mance guar­an­tees of more than 92 per­cent for the “Mey­er Burg­er White” and “Mey­er Burg­er Black” after 25 years, and even more than 93 per­cent for the espe­cial­ly robust “Mey­er Burg­er Glass” after 30 years.

This mod­ule with a trans­par­ent glass back is bifa­cial, which means that light cap­tured on the back­side is also con­vert­ed into elec­tric­i­ty. The mod­ule sets a record for the high­est bifa­cial out­put of a solar mod­ule ever pro­duced in vol­ume, with a so-called bifa­cial­i­ty fac­tor of 90 per­cent. The pan­el achieves a com­bined out­put of over 430 watt-peak at stan­dard mea­sure­ment con­di­tions (BSTC). A spe­cial, pro­pri­etary “gap­less” cell arrange­ment also makes ide­al use of the mod­ule’s sur­face area, which addi­tion­al­ly increas­es the ener­gy yield. 

The com­pa­ny relies on prod­ucts “from here”, with its own tech­nol­o­gy, devel­oped at its Swiss and Ger­man sites. As a result, the com­pa­ny also has a short‑, medi­um- and long-term roadmap that safe­guards its tech­nol­o­gy lead­er­ship in the long term. Both the solar cells and mod­ules are man­u­fac­tured in plants in the heart of Europe. The result­ing prox­im­i­ty to cus­tomers — end cus­tomers, installers and whole­salers — is a unique dif­fer­en­tia­tor for the com­pa­ny. The com­pa­ny also strives to set up its sup­ply chains local­ly to the great­est extent pos­si­ble. Already today, the entire sil­i­con used as well as oth­er com­po­nents are sourced from Europe. The com­pa­ny is thus also con­tribut­ing to Europe’s strate­gic inde­pen­dence in the key tech­nol­o­gy of pho­to­voltaics and to the resilience of sup­ply chains.

Their prod­ucts are aimed at cus­tomers who think about “tomor­row” also when it comes to solar mod­ules and who attach great impor­tance to sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The mod­ules are man­u­fac­tured accord­ing to the high­est social and envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards, as evi­denced, among oth­er things, by a sub­stan­tial grant from the fed­er­al state of Sax­ony-Anhalt, Ger­many, for sig­nif­i­cant­ly more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pared to today’s estab­lished pro­duc­tion tech­nolo­gies. Their plants in Ger­many draw 100 per­cent of their elec­tri­cal ener­gy from renew­able sources. What’s more, the mod­ules are all free of tox­ic lead and there­fore already com­pli­ant with the Euro­pean RoHS Reg­u­la­tion (Direc­tive 2011/65/EU of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment and of the Coun­cil of 8 June 2011 on the restric­tion of the use of cer­tain haz­ardous sub­stances in elec­tri­cal and elec­tron­ic equip­ment), for which the pho­to­volta­ic indus­try cur­rent­ly enjoys a tem­po­rary exemp­tion. Fur­ther­more, the con­cern is striv­ing for a solu­tion for almost com­plete recy­cling of the mod­ules, con­tribut­ing to the cir­cu­lar economy.