Meyer Burger says it will move all its production away from plastic.
Meyer Burger has announced that it will only manufacture glass-glass bifacial solar modules in the future. The Swiss manufacturer cites the two most important reasons for switching to glass. First, it wants to create “a unified, lighter and more flexible concept for Meyer Burger’s future solar modules.” According to the group, lighter production and logistics processes increase the scalability of the new manufacturing.
In the short term, Meyer Burger said the change will actually slow down production volumes at existing facilities as it moves. The company’s Goodyear production plant in the United States will be glass-to-glass from the start of next year.
While manufacturing speed and efficiency are extremely important in the solar industry, there is another, more important reason for Meyer Burger’s decision: Glass-to-glass solar panels are a better technology than their plastic backings.
Officially, the manufacturer’s warranty suggests that their “Meyer Burger Glass” solar module degrades at 0.2% or less per year for 30 years. This means that a Meyer Burger glass-to-glass module purchased today should expect to produce at least 93.2% of its original output in 2053. In theory, if this degradation rate holds, a glass-to-glass Meyer Burger panel would still produce 89.2% of its original output in 50 after a year.
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