Energy Materials Corporation (EMC) has stated its plans for roll-to-roll printing of perovskite PV on glass.

The plan is backed by two partnerships, one with the Eastman Kodak Company for roll-to-roll printing and another with glass and ceramics company Corning, for flexible glass. EMC's funding includes a $4 million research grant from the Solar Energy Technologies Office of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Researchers at South Korea's KRICT, led by Seo Jang-won, have demonstrated pilot-scale "roll-to-roll" (R2R) manufacturing of flexible and light perovskite solar cells.

As an eco-friendly antisolvent, Seo's team introduced tert-butyl alcohol (tBuOH), a colorless solid, which melts near room temperature and has a camphor-like odor, for R2R processing through cooperation with VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

Japan-based global conglomerate Toshiba, announced that it would not take any new orders for the construction work of coal-fired thermal facilities. The company is planning to shift towards renewable energy solutions.

According to Toshiba, the company will support the infrastructure sector's transformation to achieve decarbonization goals. In addition to activities involving windmills and development of secondary batteries, Toshiba aims to commercialize its newly developed next-generation tandem and perovskite solar cells by 2025.

Reports out of China suggest that a perovskite photovoltaic cell production line has gone into production in Quzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province.

The 40-hectare factory was reportedly funded by Microquanta Semiconductor and expected to produce more than 200,000 square meters of photovoltaic glass before the end of 2020.

Saule Technologies announced that it finished construction of the first stage of its new cleanroom. The entire working area will be around 430 m², and should be complete in a couple of weeks.

Saule Technologies aims to launch a prototype production line by Q4 2019. The production line will include a modular system of printers with an annual production capacity of 40,000 sqm. In 2020, the company aims to increase the annual production capacity to 200,00 sqm.

After forming a strategic partnership in March 2019 between Meyer Burger and Oxford Photovoltaics, Meyer Burger has announced that it has received its first order from Oxford Photovoltaics (Oxford PV), for a heterojunction (HJT) manufacturing line including necessary adaptions enabling the upgrade to perovskite-on-HJT tandem technology.

The order for the upgrade itself will reportedly follow later this year. The current contract volume is about CHF 20 million and provides Oxford PV with an initial manufacturing capacity of 100 MW with plans to expand tandem solar cell production capacity to 250 MW by the end of 2020.

Saule Technologies has announced that it has reached the point of technology development to be able to print its flexible, lightweight, semi-transparent, single junction solar modules with a consistent 10% efficiency. This performance, according to the Company, already enables BIPV and IoT applications in an economically viable manner.

By the end of March, Saule Technologies has also reached as high as 17.6% efficiency at the cell level (measured by an independent research institute). The durability has been significantly improved as well, with the latest stability tests indicating multiple years of flawless operation under accelerated ageing tests.

Oxford Photovoltaics (PV) has been awarded a €2.8 million grant from the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy to prepare perovskite-silicon solar cells for high-volume manufacturing. The technology consortium is by headed by Oxford PV and includes specialist PV equipment manufacturer VON ARDENNE and three German institutes, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the Technical University of Berlin.

The newly funded project focuses on the optimization of the perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell architecture, to make further efficiency improvements on industrial 156 mm x 156 mm wafer formats. Importantly, this will include the refinement of industrial scale process technology as well as life-cycle analysis on the social-environmental impact of such cells.