Manufacturer's Profile
ZNShine (produced Zen-Shine) PV-Tech Company Limited is a Chinese company that was founded in 1988. ZNShine would enter the solar panel industry in 2006 and earn for itself a considerably strong renown in the industry. In addition to solar modules ZNShine Solar is also an engineering, procurement and construction company for large-scale utility projects.
With headquarters in Changzhou, China, ZNShine has shipped its modules to Japan, India where it is the top supplier, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, UK, USA, Canada, Chile, Australia and Africa. With total production capacity at 3.2GW, ZNShine is a medium-sized solar manufacturer.
Technology
Since 2018, ZNShine coats the glass encapsulate of their modules with a graphene film layer that increases light transmission performance of the glass itself. ZNShine developed the technology in collaboration with the China University of Science and Technology.
Graphene is a special form of carbon that is a layer only one atom thick. This graphene film coating has two applications: one, it reduces losses due to the solar cells reflecting away up to 35% of the sunlight that falls on their surface. This reduction increases the transmission of light through the glass. By increasing the amount of light that passes through, the graphene helps increase the output of a panel by 1-2Wwatts. However, this does not compare favourably with anti-reflective coatings used by high-end solar panels that can be more than 7 times as effective.
The second and the main advantage of the graphene film is that it makes the solar panel self-cleaning reducing operation and maintenance costs for commercial and utility-scale power plants. Graphene is highly hydrophilic, making it easy for particles on the glass to be washed away quickly by the rain without additional effort. Commercial and utility-scale PV power plants typically use regular manual cleaning methods to clean the surface of PV modules. Large-scale cleaning is difficult to unify and it is likely to cause problems such as cracking of the cells while generating residual water stains on the surface of the module. The regular cleaning costs using labour resources adds to the overall O&M costs. According to industry estimates, a solar power plant with an installed capacity of 50MW could expend around US$150,000 per year for panel cleaning maintenance.
ZNShine’s graphene-coating module is compatible with PERC technology and all-black silicon technology. While ZNShine can provide panels with graphene coating, it is still an optional extra. It is however expected that in a few years, ZNShine's graphene-coated panels will become their mainstay module offering..
Types of ZNShine Solar Panels
ZNShine makes a wide range of multibusbar polycrystalline and monocrystalline PERC cells of both the full- and half-cut designs. ZNShine also offers bifacial modules. Most of ZNShine panels use half-cut cells.
The vast majority of manufacturers use flat bus-bars, while ZNShine uses round ones that causes less reflected sunlight, which increases the efficiency of the module.
Double Glass Panels
Glass-glass or double glass solar panels have their rear replaced which is often a traditional white plastic backsheet with a glass sandwich. This glass sandwich is by far superior because glass is more stable, nonreactive, is UV-resistant and has a longer lifespan. Due to the longer life of glass-glass panels some manufacturers offer 30 year performance warranties on dual-glass panels.
Most often the panel is damaged by micro-cracks or fire. Micro-cracks are caused by wind, either on the ground structure or on the roof, while solar panel fires are mostly caused by a careless installation and poorly made components. To avoid such events, manufacturers use multiple busbars or glass-glass systems. ZNShine uses the “double glass” system together with 9 bus-bars, which allows offering a 30 year guarantee on efficiency, and thanks to this patented technology the ZNShine panel achieves a very high non-flammability score.
ZNShine's offers 23 types of poly and mono cells double glass panels with power ratings from 265W-435W.
Single Glass Panels
ZNShine also offers about 23 types of polycrystalline and monocrystalline single glass cells with power ratings from 290W-475W.
Warranty
ZNShine product warranty is 12-15 years and their performance warranty is 25 years. ZNShine's double glass panels have a 15-year product warranty and 30-year performance warranty.
Like most Chinese manufacturers, ZNShine is driven towards the mass market rather than the premium market. With average efficiency ranges from 15.6% to 18.9%, they are a very cost-effective options for mid-performance solar modules at standard or economy price.
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