This interview between CEA’s Director of Technology and Quality, George Touloupas, and PV ModuleTech Talk was originally published on PVTech here. George and PVTech discussed industry trends in module manufacturing and technology.

CEA’s Business Growth

PVTech: How much has CEA’s business grown and what have been the key changes with new projects in the past couple of years?

George: “CEA’s current track record of engagements is over 35 GW of projects, growing fast, but this figure includes not just quality assurance services, but also takes into account engineering services (onsite inspections, owners engineering etc.) and supply chain management services (running RFPs, technical advisory on contracts, market intelligence etc.). We currently have more than 100 professionals, with over 70% of them being engineers and we keep hiring at a pace, as we have now fully launched the same range of services for the Energy Storage sector.

CEA’s service offering has increased dramatically both in breadth and volume in the last 2-3 years. We are now offering a more holistic service to our clients, because that’s exactly what they need when they plan the procurement of GW-sized pipelines, some coupled with storage, amid trade wars, fast changing markets and massive technology shifts."

CEA’s Quality Assurance Offerings

Where is most of the effort today for CEA? Is this factory auditing, inline monitoring, or pre-shipment inspections? Is this likely to remain the same split in business activities over the next 12 months also?

Factory audits are always in constant demand as new facilities are being built, new players become important, and old players make a come-back. Clients who are new entrants in PV also typically need factory audit reports for their financiers. CEA always recommends the performance of a factory audit at a facility, if we haven’t been there recently or we don’t have confidence in the quality performance, for example in the case that a new product will be manufactured.

Now, with respect to the manufacturing of a project, I would say that for more than 90% of the projects where we have quality assurance activities, we perform both inline production monitoring and pre-shipment inspection. These 2 auditing activities are indeed complimentary, in the sense that each one screens out quality deficiencies that may elude the other. For example, it is impossible to detect certain critical Bill of Materials (BoM) violations by doing pre-shipment inspection only. Daily inline monitoring is essential to validate that the right BoM is used in production. 

Southeast Asia Solar Manufacturing Vs. Chinese

The Southeast Asia region has seen strong factory investments for cell and module assembly during the past five years. How have these fabs been performing, according to CEA? And how do they benchmark against the best-in-class Chinese module fabs?

The truth is that the investment in crystalline silicon module manufacturing in South East Asia (I’d single out First Solar’s CdTe investment, which is a different story), has been, and still is, very opportunistic and entirely dependent on global trade war outcomes. As the abolition of the European MIP last year demonstrated, where the entire manufacturing volume switched to China overnight, the cost of manufacturing in China is unbeatable.

Cost of Solar Manufacturing in South East Asia 5% More Expensive than China

Although the manufacturers take all possible measures to reduce the cost and take advantage of the Chinese raw material supply chain efficiencies and the dilution of R&D and other overheads through global vertical integration, the cost of manufacturing in South East Asia is at least 5% higher than in China. This fact, combined with the fickleness of trade wars, renders any long-term investment initiative very risky.

As a result, we have big OEM operations, like Vina’s in Vietnam, where mainstream manufacturers “line-up” to produce for the US markets. In fact, this instability and unwillingness to properly invest in upgrades and expansions has created a demand-supply imbalance for the US market, that is forecasted to continue for at least the next year, driving high premiums into the prices.

Chinese manufacturing lines, on the other hand, are methodically upgraded, expanded, and fitted with the latest technology, and staffed with the best quality teams. CEA is continuously making efforts to ensure that quality is not compromised when products are made in South East Asia. Fortunately, our US clients are very much quality conscious, and we are working closely with them to make this happen.

How Does New Solar Technology Impact Production Quality?

Module assembly lines have seen rapid technology upgrade steps introduced in the past 2-3 years, driven by PERC, half-cut cell use, and new materials being used. Many times, the module makers describe these changes as routine, but with changes in BoMs, supply-chains, and new process tools, should we be considering these new lines, from an inline monitoring perspective?

It’s true that the amount and pace of changes in the recent couple of years has been phenomenal, following a rather sleepy decade. This had to happen, as the race to the lowest levelized cost of energy (LCOE) is accelerating. The manufacturers cannot even keep up with testing new product variants for extended reliability, and the buyers have trouble figuring out what’s best for them in this colourful range of product offerings.

With the proliferation of wafer sizes, even module power comparison becomes a riddle. This cascade of changes is far from being routine, and the manufacturers go through painful learning curves during mass production ramp ups, but they naturally prefer to keep a low profile about this.

New Technologies Enter Mass Production Earlier than Expected

The reality is that buyers do not have the luxury to be conservative and be left out of the game by competitors acquiring stronger technologies, therefore, these advanced products enter mass production sooner than one would expect in a mature industry, so a solution to the quality risk problems has to be found, irrespective.

Over the years, CEA has built an extended network of deep relations with all important manufacturers, R&D personnel, CTOs and test labs. This gives us a unique advantage in identifying the quality risks well in advance of being widely known and in implementing the right safeguards during the quality assurance oversight activities, before, during and after production. 

How has PERC and Other Module Technology Impacted Module Inspections?

Pre-shipment inspection must also be evolving beyond historical EL and IV testing processes. How much has PERC changed the landscape in terms of inspection metrics? Similarly, are other module technology changes demanding new means of inspecting modules pre-shipment?

As stressed before, it is essential to not only perform pre-shipment inspection, but also inline monitoring to screen out most risks. The monofacial modules using PERC (Passivated Emitter Rear Cell) cells do not require substantially different safeguards, but bifacial modules have more areas prone to quality risks to focus on, such as the glass-glass lamination and the power measurement.

Moreover, the well-known LID (Light Induced Degradation) and less well known LeTID (Light and elevated Temperature Induced Degradation) risks which are more pronounced with PERC cells demand the introduction of rigorous but practical batch testing protocols before shipment. Even if the products have passed these tests at an initial phase, process and material instabilities can still be subject to deviations and create risks.

George Touloupas is the Director of Technology and Quality at Clean Energy Associates. At CEA he leads projects centered on developing CEA’s internal quality standards, researching new production technologies, and developing new services. George has an extensive background in PV manufacturing, as well as downstream experience, working among others, prior to joining CEA, as the Chief Operating &; Technical Officer at Philadelphia Solar in Jordan and Technical & Operations Director at Recom.