Life cycle assessment on PERC solar modules

Abstract

Abstract With the pursuit of high photoelectric conversion efficiency in the photovoltaic market, passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC) modules has become the new market mainstream. The environmental impact of PERC modules requires life cycle assessment (LCA) methods to analyze. The SimaPro software was used to calculate the environmental impacts, such as global warming potential (GWP), human toxicity potential – cancer effects (HTP-CE), human toxicity potential-non-cancer effects (HTP-nCE), freshwater ecotoxicity potential (FEcP), freshwater eutrophication potential (FEuP) and abiotic depletion potential (ADP) of mono-facial and bifacial (dual-glass encapsulation and transparent back-sheet encapsulation) PERC modules prepared using 158.75\xa0mm, 166\xa0mm and 210\xa0mm silicon wafers. The rear side gain of a bifacial module increases its electricity generation in the Use stage, and thereby making bifacial module achieve better environmental performance than mono-facial module. In order to improve the rear side gain of bifacial module, it is usually necessary to select an appropriate ground reflective material in system design. The LCA results show that the waterproof membrane TPO (Thermoplastic Polyolefin) is a very good choice, and white gravel and grassland can also be considered in landscape design point of view. Whether to choose dual-glass encapsulation or transparent back-sheet encapsulation, has little effect on the overall environmental impact of bifacial modules. In addition, adding recycling in the photovoltaic industry chain can significantly reduce the overall environmental impact of photovoltaic modules, especially in the indicators such as ADP, HTP-CE and FEuP.