Canadian Solar, one of the world’s largest solar companies, has delivered 1MW of its solar panels to a new research and testing facility in the German area of Emsland. The three hectare plot will house 1MW of Canadian Solar’s ELPS modules. Different characteristics of solar modules will be tested in order to help the company investigate methods of increasing efficiency. The research facility is being set up by the Institut fur Erneuerbare Energien GmbH & Co. KG (IEE).
“The Northern part of German is incorrectly seen to be less interesting for PV installations. We want to show which advantages result from lower temperatures and therefore a lower decrease of performance of the modules. Thus we have chosen the technologically leading Canadian Solar modules with the new ELPS technology,” explained IEE’s Jörg Klingenberg.
Canadian Solar’s ELPS cells feature a Metal Wrap Through design, that the company claims allows the modules to absorb 3 percent more light per cell. As a result Canadian Solar claims that the ELPS modules deliver up to 7 percent more electricity than similar configuration conventional solar modules.
“Increasing efficiency is the most important topic for the solar industry. With our ELPS technology we made a big leap as our most recent In-house test showed results of 21.1 percent efficiency with our proprietary mono ELPS solar cell. Therefore we are very pleased that this technology will be used in Werlte,“ said Dr. Shawn Qu, Chairman and CEO of Canadian Solar.
