Solar Panel manufacturing companies around the world

It isn’t hard to believe that there are well over 500 solar panel manufacturing companies
around the world, the notable ones are companies such as BP Solar from the United Kingdom,
First Solar, SunPower Corp and OutBack Corp of the United States of America, Sanyo

These companies makes solar panels for all situations but in the main for domestic use,
it is the really large solar panel manufacturing companies who build the very large
solar panel generating sets that are used to generate electricity commercially this
companies include BP Solar from the United Kingdom, First Solar, SunPower Corp and
OutBack Corp of the United States of America, Sanyo and Kyocera Japan.

In fact First Solar recently was awarded a contract to build a 48 MW (megawatt)
solar power station in California. Companies such as BP Solar have build similar
and indeed larger such solar power generating stations through-out California
and Nevada, up to a size of 344MW (megawatt).

In Japan the same is true for Sanyo and Kyocera are also building commercial sized
solar power stations for the major power generating companies.

In China there has been no significant investment in the development of competing
solar panel technologies as usual the Chinese are content to manufacture solar panels
to specifications dictated by the western world and for western companies.

However because of the volume of solar panel products that are produced in China
five companies appear in the top 25 list of the world’s biggest manufacturers of
solar panels, these companies are Jing Ao Co Ltd, China Sunergy Co. Ltd, CEEG
Nanjing PV Tech Co.Ltd, Yingli Green Energy, Solarfun Power Holdings,
Suntech Power Holdings Ltd.

The same is true of India where Moser Baer manufacture under western supervision
large quantities of solar panels.

The companies responsible for solar panel manufacturing are located mainly in the
developed world with the market leaders being British, American and Japanese in
the main, indeed it is a shame that these amazing technologies are not manufactured
in Africa, India and China and the rest of the developing world where there is
the raw material source in great abundance.

But there are only around 90 companies manufacturing the key component for solar panels
the Photovoltaic cells that are used to convert light from the sun or indeed any light
source into electricity. As with the list of the best solar panel manufacturers the
list of the best Photovoltaic sadly lacks any country from the developing world but includes:

Sharp Electronics, Mitsubishi and Sanyo of Japan, BP Solar of the United Kingdom,
SunPower Corp.

Although as with solar panel manufacturers above a large number of Photovoltaic cells
are produced in China but they are only built in China, the design, science, development
and creative work is done in the west.
In the future it is possible that China, India may have the expertise to develop their own
solar panel research and development ability, but sadly it seems that the place where this
technology and its manufacture would benefit the people most, Africa is a long way from
catching up even China and India now and be able to make solar panels under licence
from the west.