Held by the leading and largest exposition planner in Japan-- Reed Exhibitions Japan Ltd., World Smart Energy Week took place under the warm winter sun at Tokyo Big sight for three consecutive days. This Interdisciplinary event based on power generation, energy storage, and power saving contains areas including wind power, solar power, fuel cells, secondary cells, smart grids, hydrogen energy, and green buildings.
Individual industries are provided with the opportunity to exchange views and create new business. Taiwanese independent exhibitor Gintech energy Corp., a solar cell manufacturer that attended the opening ceremony was positive that PV Expo and related expositions would bring certain benefits. In this exposition, Gintech drew attention by introducing high efficiency single crystal solar cells and PID Free products.
A well known Taiwanese module manufacturer Inventech Energy corp. also indicated that PV Expo is the greatest advertising platform. In this exposition, Inventech demonstrated the best solution to module development. Modules would go through long-term and successive PID Free, TUV, and high-intensity snow load resistance tests in order to demonstrate whether the product is able to withstand sudden extreme weather in Japan and meet the needs of the customers. Data showed that modules produced by Inventech could withstand a maximum pressure of 10800pa and a 5.4m snow load.
Though the global solar energy industry suffered the most difficult challenges in 2012, industries are still ambitious and willing to popularize solar applications and reduce the price. They not only continued to improve product efficiency, but also adopted more creative technologies. In this exposition, Tainergy Tech Corp. introduced solar cells with new structures that could reduce the use of materials but still maintain the same conversion efficiency as that of original solar cells. Tainergy indicated that they have received patent for this technology in Taiwan and Japan, and their PID Free solar cells have already been certified by related clients. Many manufacturers have introduced related products in this exposition, which showed that Tainergy was both creative and technologically potent.
On the other hand, though Kyocera has announced last year that they have received Japanese patent for 3BB, 3BB products were still displayed everywhere at the exposition. Related industries indicated that they now understand Kyocera’s 3BB patent, and they have also evaded the patent; several manufacturers have also launched the Multi-BusBar Cell structure in response to this matter. The new products introduced by Ever Energy Co. and Day4Energy, for example, were solar cells with the Multi-BusBar Cell structure. With 60 modules being able to generate 250 watts, efficiency requirements were met and infringement doubts were relieved.
It is shown in this exposition that Taiwanese manufactures not only had a great ambition in cell/module development but also branched out into systems including inverters, support frames, and testing equipments. i Energy, the first Taiwanese manufacturer to invest in micro-inverters, introduced the residential application project in this exposition. i Energy indicated that their products have already received international certification, but in Japan certification has been delayed because the Japan Electrical Safety & Environmental Technology Laboratories (JET) has yet to introduce specifications. This delay has affected the development of 10kW or smaller wattage markets. i Energy indicated that clients at the exposition were highly interested in their solutions, and several industries also expressed their interest in further cooperation. They plan to first enter the small wattage market (>10kW), and then enter the residential market (<10kW) after related products are certified.