The HIPERION consortium will have an excellent opportunity to initiate a collaborative synergy with the H2020-funded EU project HighLite (High-performance low-cost modules with excellent environmental profiles for a competitive EU PV manufacturing industry, Grant Agreement n°857793). This will also benefit both projects to have wider public outreach in the PV domain.

The HighLite project, coordinated by Loïc Tous (IMEC, Belgium), aims to substantially improve the competitiveness of the EU PV manufacturing industry by developing knowledge-based manufacturing solutions for high-performance low-cost modules with excellent environmental profiles (low CO₂ footprint, enhanced durability, improved recyclability). Notably, it focuses on the development and evaluation of a specific PV cell cutting technology, called shingling. In shingle-based solar photovoltaic modules, solar cells are cut in small rectangular sections and glued with electrically conductive adhesive on top of each other, like tiles on rooftop. This approach removes the copper interconnect between cells, reduces optical and electrical losses and makes the active area denser.

The synergy between HIPERION and HighLite projects will be launched during the manufacturing phase of HIPERION first generation modules (GEN1): two HIPERION modules will be manufactured using cell strings stemming from the HighLite project – produced at AMAT (Italy) with cells from CEA-INES (France). Furthermore, thanks to the bi-facial property of HighLite cell strings, the light is absorbed on both sides of the cells, which ensures a further increase of the energy production.

This very promising shingling technology is benchmarked within HIPERION in parallel to two other approaches with high energy yield potential.

The HIPERION and HighLite projects mutually benefit from this collaboration. HIPERION will use HighLite shingled cell technology for the manufacturing of GEN1 backplanes in order to validate the performance gain of HIPERION hybrid modules. HighLite will benefit from the direct implementation and validation of its technology, as their modules will be monitored during the whole duration of HIPERION project.

For more information of the HighLite project: https://www.highlite-h2020.eu/