Low cost using ultra-thin bifacial cells

This paper presents the global results of the BiThink project. This is a project financed by DG-TREN. The BiThink objective is to develop and demonstrate an industrial technology able to exert direct influence on the cost of photovoltaic systems. BiThink focuses on three key aspects: the use of bifacial cells and albedo modules as a simple way to increase the amount of energy collected, the increase in the number of wafers obtained from the slicing of silicon ingots and the use of a simple and at last an efficient manufacturing process, able to combine high mechanical yields with reasonable cell efficiency. BiThink shows impressive figures in terms of the consumption of silicon: 5.9 grams per Watt peak using conservative yield values. Another important result is the large amount of new technology developed in the project in the areas of ingot slicing, post-slicing wafer separation, screen printing diffusion, mechanical handling, crack detection, and thin solar cell interconnection.