The Evolution History Of Solar Module Size In China

Details on China's solar module size development

The earliest Chinese photovoltaic modules were all round monocrystalline silicon. Why were they round? Because silicon rods are round, they were too precious to cut, so round silicon wafers were used directly to make batteries and modules. This was the module in the 1980s.

Later, monocrystalline silicon wafers were unified, and the size of silicon wafers was unified to 125mm×125mm, which was the mainstream at the time.

Later, the price of monocrystalline modules was high, and polycrystalline modules appeared. After polycrystalline modules, thin-film modules appeared again.

Hanerg pushed China's thin-film modules to a new height. There was once a battle between thin-film and crystalline silicon, but with the decline of Hanerg, thin-film failed. After that, polycrystalline silicon became our mainstream.

However, starting in 2016, with the rise of Longi, monocrystalline silicon took off again. Longi made monocrystalline modules almost the same price as polycrystalline modules. The two major technical routes made monocrystalline break out of the ground, and 156mm×156mm monocrystalline became a popular module size. The standard size of 1.65m×0.99m has dominated Chinese modules for many years.

But the module size began to be free, and various solar module companies no longer manufactured solar panels according to unified standards. The module size is getting bigger and bigger, and there is less and less standardization.

What is the largest size of mass-produced modules at present? It is Trina Solar's 760 watts, with a width of 1.3m and a length of 2.4m, which is the size of a ping-pong table module.

So, will there be no upper limit? Yes, I never expected that our container size would unify the size of the modules. Those who break the rules of the industry are always laymen.

Finally, the nine leading module companies fixed the size of the modules at 1134mm×2384mm, which may be the end of the near future.

However, at the 14th SNEC Photovoltaic Exhibition, Chinese manufacturer JA Solar unveiled the world's largest and most powerful solar panel to date, with a power of 810 W, model Jumbo, which has a quadruple arrangement of 47 cells and measures 2,220mmx 1,757 mm. The panel uses a three-cut cell design with 11 busbars on a 210mm wafer. JA sets the maximum power output at 800W. The module has not yet been mass-produced.

So will the size of the components start to let go again?