The first lightweight flexible module photovoltaic project

China-based perovskite solar cell and module manufacturer Mellow Energy, a spin-off of the Institute of New Energy Technology at Jinan University, announced it has fabricated what it claims to be the world's largest integrated flexible perovskite photovoltaic module.

Lightweight and flexible solar cell modules have great potential to be installed in locations with loading limitations and to expand the photovoltaics market. We used polyethylene terephthalate films instead of thick glass cover as front cover materials to fabricated lightweight solar cell modules with crystalline silicon solar cells.

Flexible thin-film solar modulesincrease the number of surfaces that can be used to provide solar energy generation, providing more opportunities for renewable, clean energy, helping move the bar forward to a carbon-neutral future.

Flexible, lightweight, low-cost photovoltaic (PV) technology is necessary for the deployment of PV devices in dense cities like Hong Kong. However, traditional silicon solar cells do not meet the requirements because of technical flaws, such as thick and heavy volume, cumbersome fabrication processes, and extensive environmental pollution.

Lightweight solar cell modules with c-Si solar cells were fabricated using PET films. The fabricated modules have flexible properties. The lightweigh and flexible modules exhibit high reliability under both high temperature and high humidity conditions.

To fabricate a lightweight solar cell module, we used a 0.025 mm-thick PET film sheet as both a front-cover and a backsheet. The solar cells were encapsulated with EVA. As a reference sample, we fabricated solar cell modules with 3.2 mm-thick glass as the front-cover material. The sample structures are shown in Fig. 1.