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The HIBC cell and module are both record conversion efficiencies for the company. Image: LONGi

Leading Chinese solar company LONGi has announced two new efficiency records for hybrid interdigitated back contact (HIBC) solar cells and modules.

LONGi has developed HIBC cells with a conversion efficiency of 28.13%, an improvement over the company’s previous record of 28.04%, set in January of this year. The new record was certified by the Institute for Solar Energy Research Hamelin (ISFH) in Germany.

Modules fabricated based on these cells then delivered a conversion efficiency of 26.4%, breaking the company’s previous record of 26%. The new record was certified by the US National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR).

The company described its HIBC cells as the “ultimate solution for single-junction crystalline silicon (C-Si) cell technology,” which accounts for around 95% of the global PV market, according to the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems.

Last year, a number of industry experts, including ISC Konstanz co-founder and director Radovan Kopecek, wrote a piece for PV Tech on how the prevalence of C-Si in the solar industry, and the forecast growth of solar in the global energy mix, means that C-Si will come to “dominate” the global energy mix by 2050. Kopecek has also espoused the advantages of back-contact technologies.

LONGi, meanwhile, has already launched its back contact cells on the commercial scale. At least year’s Intersolar Europe event in Munich, Germany, it launched its EcoLife series of modules, which boast a power conversion efficiency of 25%. Today, the company said that it would “focus on technological innovation, accelerating the translation of laboratory efficiency breakthroughs into large-scale manufacturing, and serving the global energy transition.”

LONGi was one of several Chinese majors to post lower profits at the end of last year after sustained low module prices across the industry. The company has since posted stronger module sales figures, including over 2GW of supply deals in Europe in the first quarter of this year, as its back contact modules become more popular in Europe.

By JP Casey