Handy table of Top 20 Photovoltaic Manufacturers

2008 Q-cells 581.6 First Solat 504.0 Suntech 497.5 Sharp 473.0 JA 300.0 Kyocera 290.0 Yingli 281.5 Motech 272.0 SunPower 237.0 Sanyo 215.0 Trina 210.0 SolarWorld 190.0 Gintech 180.0 Ningbo Solar Electric 160.0 Solarfun 149.0 Schott 149.0 MHI 148.0 BP 145.0 Ersol 143.0 Neo Solar 135.0 REC 135.0 Isofoton 130.0 China Sunergy co. 120.0 Uni-Solar 112.6 Changzhou Eging 106.0 Canadian Solar Inc. 102.8

Reliance is yet to produce anything... thay have a small moduling facility in Maharashtra but that about it... MoserBaer has 120MW installed already and will have another 165 MW added to this existing capacity by 09 end and thats not the end, end 2010, MoserBaer will have installed capacity 800 MW

You have missed several names from India, especially, Reliance.

I wrote Nanosolar asking them if they were in production, and if so, what was the volume and what the cost was. They never responded. My buddy that works for a competitor says Nanosolar is big on talk but fails to deliver. The watts are peak at AZ at noon, I don't think the realizable output is as bad as 15%, it is more like 30%, at least in lower latitudes, and that includes the off-time at night.

Interesting list ... seems to be missing some key players... REC and SCHOTT SOLAR should surely be on this ?

Table missing United Solar Ovonic (www.uni-solar.com) based in Michigan and is a U.S. powerhouse for thin films.

Please consider CENTROSOLAR AG (GERMANY) with 150 MW leader in Europe for rooftop modules

How are these capacities defined? Are they the figures for the raw output from a panel pointed directly at the noonday sun, or for the usable output averaged over time? Allowing for day/night, obliquity factor, fouling by dirt, atmospheric scattering, shading by clouds and chimneys and AC/DC conversion losses, I estimate that the usable power is only around 15% of the peak figure.

Even if there are 2 US companies, their main production is done overseas - Philipines for Sunpower and China for First Solar. Thin film will become important in 09 as AMAT supplied fabs come online. Ersol has at least one large thin film line. For good information on solar (and more accurate), read Photon magazine online.

At ELK INDUSTRIES, LLC, we have just begun Producing and Selling Our OWN BRAND of SOLAR PANELS. They are "Top Grade" Panels, and Meet or exceed the NASA Block-5 Module Specifications. They are PolyCrystalline Type, and therefore, have a Smaller "Foot Print" than Amorphous Silicon Panels. We (also) are working on SOLAR (Photovoltaic) Panels which do NOT USE ANY Silicon (at all, as one of the Main Ingredients) to Produce them! Our Website: www.elkindustries.com Thank You.

So... why does the ranking go screwy after First Solar?

Why do you not have Nanosolar included in your company list? They claim to have a printable solar cell process that will drive the cost way down and up the efficiency at the same time.

CSIQ missing

When the Total in Mw exceeds 30,000 (in other words, 30 gigawatts) annual production will be right around the level necessary to replace all the non-renewable energy resources currently in production in the United States (which is, in turn, about 1/4th of all power production in the world). 30 years times 30 gw is 900Gw, or nearly 1 trillion watts. A chart of the wind turbine providers added to this might well show that we're close to, or beyond, half way there.