New M10 silicon wafer standard size (182mm x 182mm)

Monocrystalline manufacturer Longi Green Energy announced that it was among seven PV manufacturers in China to have signed up to an initiative calling on the whole PV industry to adopt 182 mm as a new standard for solar silicon wafers.

The seven companies to have joined the initiative so far, according to Longi, are JinkoSolar, Canadian Solar, JA Solar, Runyang Yueda Photovoltaic Technology, Lu’an Solar Technology and Zhongyu Photovoltaic Technology, as well as Longi itself.

There is much news to celebrate the higher power/PC in the past months. When you read the datasheet of those new power of solar modules, you may find the solar cells are totally different among those companies.

With the absence of a common standard, however, companies have adopted wafers of varying sizes, resulting in an increase in manufacturing costs throughout the entire industry supply chain, including wafers, cells, modules and auxiliary materials such as glass. This situation has complicated customers’ selection processes, the installation of photovoltaic systems and coordination between the industry’s upstream and downstream sectors.

To effectively address these issues and accelerate the industry’s efficient and standardized development, LONGi is jointly advocating the establishment of a silicon wafer standard – M10 – with a geometric size of 182mm x 182mm, and its inclusion in the specification files of the industry’s standards organization.