Chinese solar manufacturer JinkoSolar has unveiled a 580W module, upping the ante in the 500W-plus PV panel stakes, and besting its own 460W module series little more than six months after it launching it on the Australian market at All-Energy in October last year.
The new module range, dubbed the Tiger Pro, had its virtual global launch at the end of last week, and is slated to begin commercial production in Q3 2020, when it will likely take the lead in the ever-competitive race to take modules past 500W.
Just last week, Beijing-based JA Solar announced plans to launch its own “record-breaking” PV module on the market in the second half of 2020, which it claimed had set a new industry record for power output by surpassing 525W under standard testing conditions.
And fellow Chinese rival Trina Solar revealed last month that its recently launched Vertex series of panels had notched up a peak power output of more than 515Wp during independent testing.
According to JinkoSolar, the Tiger Pro series can generate a maximum power output of up to 580Wp, and has a conversion efficiency of up to 21.6%, boosted by half-cut cell, nine busbars and tiling/shingling ribbon technology.
The company said in a statement this week that it expects the high energy density modules, which come in bifacial and monofacial versions, to be a hit with utility scale projects, by offering more powerful and efficient solar farms with lower cost of generation and higher returns on investment.
”We’ve made an enormous leap into the high efficiency era by introducing industry-leading and more competitive products,” said JinkoSolar CEO Kangping Chen in a statement.
“The global PV market is rapidly moving towards high-performance modules to reduce system costs and initial upfront capital investment, so it was time to consolidate our competitiveness by leveraging our ability to rapidly begin mass producing cutting-edge products.
“We always modify our designs based on customer feedback and market response because designing high-efficiency products in the lab is one thing, but ramping up to mass production drives the entire industry forward together towards grid parity,” he said.
“With various types of modules, Tiger Pro series enables the construction of more powerful and efficient solar power farms that will bring higher return on investment for projects with larger technical and efficiency requirements,” Chen added. “It is expected to lead the next generation of industry standards and drive the PV industry developing into a new chapter.”
Last month, JinkoSolar offshoot Jinko Power – a separate entity from JinkoSolar but the two companies share the same chairman, Li Xiande – was named as part of a consortium including French energy giant EDF that delivered the stunningly low winning bid for the 2GW Al Dhafra project in Abu Dhabi.
Sophie is editor of One Step Off The Grid and editor of its sister site, Renew Economy. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.
