ILAND is the official and exclusive partner of FLEXCELL.

ILAND integrated solar cells from FLEXCELL in its products. But, thanks to its exclusive partnership, ILAND has developed its own patents for its products.

 

SOLAR PANELS TECHNOLOGY

A new generation of solar modules
Our company manufactures light, thin and flexible PV cells, using a protected thin film coating technology developed in our laboratories. With the aim to achieve significantly lower production costs, the company has industrialized the process to deposit a single amorphous silicon layer on low cost plastic substrates.

Thin film solar cells
The most common materials used are amorphous silicon or polycrystalline materials like cadmium telluride (CdTe) and copper indium (gallium) diselenide (CIS or CIGS). These materials are all efficient light absorbers and therefore only need to be about 1 μm thick, hence material costs are significantly reduced. All of these materials are suitable for large area deposition and hence high volume manufacturing. The thin film semi-conductor layer can be deposited either onto coated glass, stainless steel or plastic substrates.

Amorphous silicon is the best developed solution in the field of thin film technologies
Although amorphous silicon cells are less efficient (6% to 10% stabilized module efficiency), they are potentially cheaper than crystalline silicon and other thin film technologies, because of their lower material costs and cheaper scalable manufacturing processes. Thin film technologies can offer particular design options for building integrated applications and have the potential to meet the BIPV product requirements.

 

#CMSVIDEO;CMS Video#

KEY ADVANTAGES

BEST INTEGRATION: flexibility, lightweight and easy installation
The flexibility of our modules enables them to be integrated onto building components of various shapes and sizes.

Thousands of other applications are possible due to the flexibility (awnings, tents, lorry covers, façade components, etc.). This gives to the company a unique competitor position for all applications that crystalline products are not able to offer. The specific weight of our BIPV (Building integrated photovoltaic) systems is much LOWER than that of crystalline modules, which enables it to be installed on any light roofs and facades, or surfaces where light solutions are required.

 

The installation and the maintenance of our modules are easy, since they form an integral part of the building components.
The company is partnering with international roofing membrane suppliers, to laminate the PV film directly onto various back sheets. This will result in a seamless and cost effective module, to be used as a normal WATERPROOFING membrane.

HIGH ENERGY PRODUCTION: at any orientation, by heat and in the shade
The modules represent the best solution for all curved roofs, since they give the same output as crystalline modules at an ideal incline of 30°.

These modules produce more kWh/kWp per year than crystalline solutions with the same orientation, whether they are inclined at 30°, on a flat roof or on a building facade.

Our products are more efficient in the heat, thanks to the favorable temperature coefficient of PV film. Do not need to be cooled or ventilated.

After more than 5 years, our factory installation demonstrates a constant output, without any sign of degradation in its performance.

 

TOTAL QUALITY: thanks to our own lamination process and quality raw material
All our products are manufactured in our high-tech factory.

Our PV modules are made using a lamination process that stacks different layers of materials to protect the PV film and give it its functionality. Under pressure and at a temperature of 150°, the stack is laminated together to give a completely integrated system, preventing delamination of the individual layers from the back sheet.

Compared to other flexible modules available on the market, whose layers are glued together, our modules and materials are thus very resistant to delamination.

Amorphous silicon is the only available flexible solar cell technology which has shown stable outdoor performance. This is due to the intrinsic stability of the a-Si semiconductor material with respect to moisture vapor penetration.
All other flexible thin film solar technologies have either no proven outdoor stability or they have to use expensive or rigid (=glass) encapsulate materials.

BEST ENERGY PAYBACK
Our products are leading in terms of energy payback time (less than 6 months of operation are needed to “reimburse” the energy consumed during the manufacturing and installation of our modules).

PROCESS

VHF-coating process
A Very High Frequency Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition Process is used to coat a substrate with nano-scale amorphous silicon layers (0.3 μm). The VHF process has a deposition rate 5 times higher than conventional radio frequency plasma deposition processes, thus resulting in a shorter deposition time. The process temperature is also substantially lower, thus allowing the coating of plastic substrates.

Roll-to-roll manufacturing
The flexibility of the plastic substrate used by us enables roll-to-roll manufacturing processes, thus allowing high throughput and easy to upscale production capacity.

There are five major steps in our manufacturing process:

• Metal coating of a plastic roll
• VHF Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition of a-Si layers
• Multipass plasma Vapor Deposition of Transparent Conductive Oxide (TCO)
• Layer structuring
• Module encapsulation with plastic foils

COMPARATIVE EXAMPLE
The Swiss Institute for Applied Sustainability to the Built Environment (ISAAC) realizes the PV module testing for all type of modules (crystalline, amorphous…). Its focus is on quality control, long term reliability, efficiency of the PV modules most commonly found on the market, and on studying a methodology for classifying the behavior and performance in a standard way. Every year, tests are conducted on approximately 20 types of PV modules by using different technologies such as exposing them to real operating conditions for one year, at maximum power.

Scientific and academic research led to the conclusion that our 6% peak efficiency modules (black) are more effective and have often a bigger annual return than higher peak efficiency crystalline modules (grey).

EVOLUTION OF THE TECHNOLOGY
Amorphous silicon is a promising material for use in low cost photovoltaic modules. However, since a sufficiently rough substrate is needed for light trapping in these devices. We prepare now to deposit layers (triple junction) by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). The first part of the project is thus to optimize those different characteristics by changing the PECVD deposition parameters to achieve efficient layers for use as shunt “passivation” in solar cells. In a second phase of the project the layers will be implemented in amorphous silicon solar cells to increase the efficiency.

We plan every year an increase of 25% of efficiency with our amorphous technology and we will achieve a total peak efficiency of 10% for 2013.