Any business needs a monetary driver and solar PV is not any exception thereto . Now with the solar PV reaching grid parity, end customers/ developers/ investors are now keen to further lower its prices to maximise their commercial returns. an identical drive of cost reduction had already been realized in semiconductor where growing the dimensions of the semiconductor chip seemed a way viable option, because it resulted in direct savings by reducing the manufacturing costs. Taking a cue from semiconductor industry, the PV industry started looking onto increasing the wafer sizes. the primary major shift was from the industry settled size of M2 to M2.5 (G1) in 2018 which quickly became mainstream. Within an equivalent time other manufacturers also started rolling out their versions of wafer sizes namely M4, M4+ & M6. Introduction of M6 in early 2019 was known to remain put because it was the sensible maximum limit of expansion of the then existing cell manufacturing lines. While M6 was within the mainstream, a replacement wafer size M12 was introduced by end of 2019 with a thought of converging the PV industry to the semiconductor industry. It seemed that M12 was the last word option and there might not be any longer developments, few industry players within the mid of 2020 started promoting M10 wafer (Figure 1). While there seem to be a transparent distinction between these two wafer sizes, the very fact that the high wafer sizes cause higher power output modules at lower manufacturing costs can’t be ignored, which is that the idea around which the present developments are encircling.

With the increasing wafer sizes, it’s clear that the dimensions of modules encapsulating these cells are sure to increase which further results in module with enhanced power output. With each and each player leaving no stones unturned to market their module and prove their superiority in comparison to other modules, it’s important for us to possess a comprehensive overview of benefits of such module types. For the aim of comparison, we’ve considered the foremost prominent PV modules which are available within the market i.e. M6 based, M10 based & M12 based and M6 was considered as reference.
Energy yield is that the amount of the energy the facility plant generated for a given capacity. For a given system, it’s estimated that power station utilizing M12 based module have 1% abs gain in energy yield.
Better referred to as balance of system, BOS compiles of all the value heads like cabling, land, MMS, inverter, etc. M12 based module are known have a transparent advantage at BOS level which directly affects the CAPEX of the solar energy plant. The enhancement within the energy gains and therefore the savings at BOS level when comparing M10 v/s M12 are often attributed to the very fact that by increasing the module area to around 10%, we will get power boost around 13% at same efficiency.
LCOE or levelized cost of electricity denotes the generating cost of energy over solar energy plant’s life time. LCOE is one among the key indicators for solar plant’s overall profitability. With both energy yield of the facility plant being higher and therefore the BOS cost of power station being lower, LCOE for M12 based power plantsis known to be better than M10 based modules.