Life cycle assessment of TOPCon solar modules

Abstract

TOPCon PV modules are the latest widespread product in the solar industry following PERC modules. Existing life cycle assessment (LCA) of Chinese PV products suffers from insufficient localized inventory data and single-factory sample bias. Based on field surveys of five leading Chinese PV manufacturers, this study establishes a localized aspirational best-in-class life cycle inventory (LCI) for state-of-art Chinese PV manufacturing and applies the ReCiPe 2016 framework to compare full life-cycle impacts of PERC and TOPCon modules, quantify inter-manufacturer performance gaps, and evaluate two module upgrade pathways. The localized grid factor corrects the overestimation bias of conventional generic databases. TOPCon's total environmental impact per kWh of lifetime generation is only 77.42% of PERC's. Inter-manufacturer gaps concentrate in cell fabrication. Increasing module power from 600 Wp to 655 Wp reduces per-kWp environmental burden by 8.41%, while 1.6 mm ultra-thin cover glass delivers an additional 2.72% reduction. This study provides data support for China's PV low-carbon transformation.