新型太陽能板是美國追趕中國的最佳希望（1/2）

 Recently The New York Times reported the following:

New Crop of Solar Panels Is the U.S.’s Best Hope of Catching China (1/2)

Th NYT - By Ivan Penn (Ivan Penn is a reporter based in Los Angeles and covers the energy industry. His work has included reporting on clean energy, failures in the electric grid and the economics of utility services.)

Oct. 5, 2026

Producers of solar panels in the United States say they are on the cusp of a technological breakthrough that could upend the industry and even threaten China’s grip on it.

The manufacturers are racing to develop new kinds of panels that can generate 25 percent more energy than most such devices available today. If they are successful, the advance will allow the world to meet the rapidly rising demand for electricity with less land and roof area.

The new technology, known as tandem solar, involves adding second and third layers of material, like a layer cake, to allow panels to convert more of the sun’s radiance into electricity.

Researchers have been working to perfect tandem panels for many years, but now several companies, including Tandem PV, First Solar and Hanwha Qcells, say they are preparing to sell such panels commercially soon, after successfully testing the devices and obtaining certifications from technical bodies.

“It is the next frontier,” said Mike Carr, executive director of the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition. He acknowledged that Chinese companies were also working on tandem solar but said their technology “is not better than ours and maybe even behind us.”

But the new tandem panels and their manufacturers will face many challenges. Power producers will be reluctant to buy new devices that are too expensive or until manufacturers can convince them that tandem panels will not degrade more quickly than conventional panels.

U.S. politics could be another barrier. Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration have made it hard for new solar farms to obtain federal permits while trying to increase the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power plants.

Then there is China, which controls about 80 percent of the solar panel market by supplying either panels or their components.

China devastated the U.S. solar panel manufacturing industry by offering devices at prices far lower than companies in the United States, Germany and Japan — which dominated the industry until around 2010.

The Biden and Trump administrations have tried to revive U.S. solar manufacturing with tariffs, subsidies and other policies. Partly as a result, new factories have been built across the country in recent years. Hanwha, a South Korean company that bought the German solar manufacturer Qcells in 2012, has spent billions on production lines in Georgia, including in Cartersville, north of Atlanta.

Energy experts say perfecting tandem panels before the Chinese do would allow the United States, Germany and other countries to reclaim a big share of the global solar industry.

Qcells has been testing its tandem solar panels in its lab in Germany as well as in fields in the United States, Australia, Cyprus and South Korea to show that they are ready. Among other things, the company has been blasting panels with LED light to see how they will perform. It has also been firing balls of ice — some roughly the size of marbles, others as big as or slightly bigger than golf balls — at panels to see how they handle extreme weather.

The tests are designed to reassure energy companies, investors and lenders that the new panels will last 20 to 30 years once they are installed in baking deserts or in fields subject to torrential downpours.

The power industry is “quite conservative in accepting new technologies,” said Fabian Fertig, head of tandem research and development for Qcells, who is based in Leipzig, Germany. “We’ve been focused on stability. We have to convince banks that this new technology can deliver.”

Scientists developed early tandem panels decades ago, but it has taken time to ensure that they could withstand harsh conditions — from heat and humidity to pounding hail.

“There are all these questions around how long they actually last,” said Chetan Krishna, a principal at RMI, a research organization that specializes in sustainability and was previously known as the Rocky Mountain Institute. “Are there degradation issues that we don’t know yet?”

Mr. Krishna and other experts say they believe the tandem solar panels are very close to being ready.

But the technology remains expensive. By some estimates, these panels could cost three to three and a half times as much as conventional devices, which are typically made of one layer of silicon.

The cost of buying and installing conventional panels for solar farms ranges from about 93 cents to $1.06 per watt, according to a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Andrés Gluski, chief executive of AES, a big utility and power company, said price would be crucial to the success of tandem panels because Chinese manufacturers sold solar panels at very low prices. China “could probably supply the world twice over,” he said.

(to be continued)

Translation

新型太陽能板是美國追趕中國的最佳希望（1/2）

美國太陽能板生產商表示，他們即將迎來一項技術突破，這項突破可能會顛覆整個產業，甚至威脅中國在該領域的主導地位。

製造商正在競相開發新型太陽能板，其發電量比目前市面上大多數同類產品高出25%。如果成功，這項技術將使世界能夠以更少的土地和屋頂面積滿足快速增長的電力需求。

這項被稱為疊層太陽能的新技術，是在太陽能板上增加第二層和第三層材料，就像製作千層蛋糕一樣，從而使電池板能夠將更多的太陽輻射轉化為電能。

多年來，研究人員一直在努力完善串聯式太陽能板，如今，包括 Tandem PV、First Solar 和Hanwha Qcells 在內的多家公司表示，在成功完成設備測試並獲得技術機構認證後，他們正準備很快將此類電池板推向市場。

美國太陽能製造商聯盟執行董事 Mike Carr 表示:「這是下一個前沿領域」。他承認中國公司也在研發串聯式太陽能技術，但表示他們的技術「並不比我們的好，甚至可能落後於我們」。

然而，新型串聯式電池板及其製造商將面臨許多挑戰。電力生產商不願購買價格過高的新設備，或者除非製造商能夠讓他們相信串聯式電池板的性能衰減速度不會比傳統電池板更快。

美國政治也可能成為另一道障礙。國會共和黨人和特朗普政府在試圖增加化石燃料和核電廠使用的同時，使去建新太陽能發電廠難以獲得聯邦許可。

現在中國透過供應太陽能板或其組件，控制著約80%的太陽能板市場。

中國以遠低於美國、德國和日本（這三個國家在2010年左右之前一直主導著該行業）的價格，重創了美國的太陽能板製造業。

拜登和特朗普政府都曾試圖透過關稅、補貼和其他政策來重振美國的太陽能製造業。近年來美國各地新建了許多工廠部分是因為這些政策。韓國韓華(Hanwha) 集團於2012年收購了德國太陽能製造商Qcells，並在喬治亞州（包括亞特蘭大北部的Cartersville）的生產線上投入了數十億美元。

能源專家表示，如果美國、德國和其他國家能夠先於中國改良串聯太陽能板，它們將有機會重新奪回全球太陽能產業的很大份額。

Qcells一直在其位於德國的實驗室，以及美國、澳洲、塞浦路斯和韓國實地測試其串聯太陽能板，以證明其產品已經準備就緒。該公司一直在進行多項測試，其中包括用LED燈照射太陽能板，以測試其性能。此外，他們還向電池板發射冰球 - 有些冰球大小與彈珠相仿，有些則與高爾夫球相當或略大 - 以測試其在極端天氣條件下的耐久性。

這些測試旨在讓能源公司、投資者和貸款機構確信，這些新型太陽能板一旦安裝在酷熱的沙漠或暴雨頻繁的地區，就能使用20到30年。

位於德國萊比錫的Qcells公司串聯式太陽能板研發負責人Fabian Fertig表示，電力產業“在接受新技術方面相當保守”。 “我們一直專注於穩定性。我們必須讓銀行相信這項新技術能夠真正發揮作用。”

科學家早在幾十年前就開發出了早期的串聯式太陽能板，但要確保它們能夠承受從高溫高濕到冰雹等惡劣環境，則需要時間。

RMI（一家專注於可持續發展的研究機構，前身為Rocky Mountain Institute）負責人Chetan Krishna 說: “關於它們的實際使用壽命，還有很多疑問” ， “是否存在一些我們尚未了解的太陽能板衰減方面問題” 。

Krishna和其他專家表示，他們認為串聯太陽能板快準備好了。

但這項技術仍然成本高昂。據估計，這些電池板的成本可能是傳統電池板的三到三倍半，而傳統電池板通常由一層矽製成。

根據太陽能產業協會的報告，購買和安裝用於太陽能發電廠的傳統電池板的成本約為每瓦 0.93 美元至 1.06 美元。

大型公用事業和電力公司 AES 的執行長 Andrés Gluski 表示，價格對於串聯板的成功至關重要，因為中國製造商以非常低的價格出售太陽能板。他說，中國「或許能夠供應全世界兩倍的太陽能板」。

（待續）