Australia’s only manufacturer of solar panels, Tindo Solar, has launched its first utility-scale panel.
Tindo Solar’s residential and commercial rooftop panels have ranked the highest quality in Australia with independent testing by Choice magazine, Desert Knowledge Australia and the Australian National University that has found Tindo panels to be the best-performing and most durable in the local market.
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Now the world’s foremost independent tester of electrical equipment has found Tindo Solar’s new utility-scale panel to be the most efficient ever made in Australia, and one of the most efficient panels available in the world.
TUV SUD Korea has evaluated Tindo Solar’s new utility-scale panel as not only developing almost 5W more than its rating, but also established that the 545W Karra module has the lowest cell-to-module (CTM) loss ratio of an Australia-made module.
In recent testing—as a precondition of its product listing with the Clean Energy Council—the engineers at TUV found the utility-scale panels produced 549W of power at around 21 per cent module efficiency and 23.1 per cent cell efficiency, and recorded just 0.07 per cent CTM loss.
The industry average energy efficiency of a solar module is between 17 and 19 per cent, and the average CTM loss is 2-3 per cent.
Tindo Solar’s new 545W utility-scale panel was designed to coincide with its new production line in South Australia that uses the latest global standard for solar cells, the M10. The 545W Tindo Karra panel is considerably larger than Tindo’s largest residential rooftop module (410W Karra), and is designed to be used in utility-scale arrays, either in rooftop or ground-mounted applications.
Tindo Solar CEO Shayne Jaenisch said Tindo Solar had decided to enter the utility-scale market with a panel that maintained the same quality assurance guaranteed in its residential rooftop panels.
“The engineering and technical team at Tindo Solar set out to build the world’s best solar module for the utility-scale market, and with 0.07 per cent CTM loss, and 23 per cent cell efficiency, they have designed a world-beating panel.
“Many corporate owners of solar projects have internal policies about forced labour and they want some assurance about their supply chains. Our cells do not come from Uyghur Province and our suppliers were not named in the damming report on forced labour, In Broad Daylight. The modules are made at Mawson Lakes and we have an open-door policy—customers and regulators can come down and watch the panels being made.”
He said the issue of disused panels going to landfill is also against many organisations’ sustainability policies, and the issue could be partly addressed with quality modules.
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“Large solar arrays use hundreds—even thousands—of panels, which don’t have to be registered with the CEC. They are low-cost and low-quality and they have a typical life of less than seven years. We’ve built a utility-scale panel to last 25 years and it will be listed by the CEC. We believe our approach aligns much better with sustainability policies and the broader goals of renewable energy.”
Tindo Solar also has a program to repurpose second-hand Tindo panels for social and environmental initiatives, and Tindo Solar had formed a partnership with Adelaide company, Reclaim PV, which can recycle 98 per cent of a solar panel.
