MANUFACTURINGINTEGRATION
temperatures, and increased output power even during high summertime temperatures. The high conversion efficiency of HIT cells means more capacity can be installed compared to conventional crystalline silicon solar cells.
The HIT cell has a history of having the best efficiencies in their class of solar cells. The latest addition to their stable of solar cells is the N230 solar cell module with an energy conversion efficiency of 20.7 percent, which makes it the most efficient solar module produced so far. Sanyo are proud of the fact that their efficiency rating is based on the minimal expectation from each cell so the 20.7% is the least a consumer should expect and will invariably experience greater efficiencies.
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Underneath the Sanyo PV umbrella at the Kansai site. It acts as a filling station for electric vehicles
the Sanyo holdings if they were to okay the merger. As the main focus for Panasonic was the Green Energy division of Sanyo the loss of Sanyo’s semiconductor business to ON Semiconductor as well as other divestments did not impact on the long term vision.
Panasonic has announced they will phase out the Sanyo name by 2012 although hinted some products would maintain the Sanyo moniker.
Solar cell focus
Toshio
Iue.The founder of Sanyo
One of the four pillars featured in Panasonic’s green desires is energy creation using solar cells with the world’s highest class of energy conversion efficiency. They achieved this goal with the Sanyo takeover. In 1994 the company released the first version of what was to become their successful HIT solar cells. Sanyo is a major manufacturer of solar panels, with three factories in Japan, one in Hungary serving Europe, and a fifth in Mexico that serves the US market. The N series of modules are produced in Japan and consist of solar cells of the Hetero-junction with Intrinsic Thin-layer (HIT) type.
HIT stands for “Heterojunction with intrinsic Thin- layer” and is an original technology of SANYO Electric Co. The Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin- layer solar cell is a hybrid model that combines a crystalline silicon substrate and an amorphous silicon thin film. HIT solar cells contain a single thin crystalline wafer of silicon surrounded by ultra-thin amorphous layers of silicon. They are mainly characterized by high efficiency at high
The recent efficiency boost was achieved by increasing the number of solar cell tabs from two to three and making each tab thinner. They also applied AG coated glass to the cells, and this reduces the amount of scattering and reflection of light. The increase in energy conversion efficiency could make the solar modules useful in areas with less than ideal amounts of sunshine. Sanyo plans to nearly double its HIT solar cell production to 600 MW by March of this year.
Storage capacity Another of Panasonic’s future pillars that will be provided by Sanyo is the desire to be the largest providers of rechargeable batteries in the world. Sanyo is already the world’s biggest maker of lithium ion cell rechargeable batteries and their Eneloop rechargeable consumer batteries are the only rechargeable batteries that can be used from the pack. Eneloop is a low self-discharge nickel- metal hydride battery (LSD NiMH) that was introduced in November 2005.
Sanyo is a leader in rechargeable batteries for cars and industrial usage fitting in neatly with Panasonic’s domestic focus. The combined Japanese company produces about a quarter of lithium-ion batteries for cellular phones. Like many Sanyo products you don’t always see how wide they infiltrate but they lead the mobile phone rechargeable battery market by a wide margin. The company is also intending on dominating the electric vehicle market and their pro-active increase in battery production will lead to a reduction in battery prices leading to cheaper electric vehicles and faster uptake.
www.solar-pv-management.com Issue I 2011
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