Panasonic has released a statement that it wants to be Japan’s top maker of solar cells within about three years as part of an increased focus on environmental technology. Panasonic will expand its solar cell business by incorporating the technology of Sanyo Electric, which joined the Panasonic group last year.
The electronics company will invest 1.07 billion dollars by early 2016 to increase production of Sanyo’s ‘HIT’, one of the world’s most efficient solar cells. Panasonic aims to become one of the world’s top three solar cell makers within about six years.
October 10th, 2010 at 1:13 am
Hello,
I am a UK based designer and have very little knowledge about solar energy but wish to understand much more about solar cells and how they work as I have an idea for their wider use as I think genuinely renewable energy is going to become very important.
1. What does a photovoltaic cell looks like in isolation? What are its dimensions?
2. More crucially it is possible to build/mould PV’s into my own designed products or do they have to be made only in your modules? (Surely if a product is ‘modular’ it can be configured in differing ways as long as they come together as one module before the collection point of the power they are producing?
3. Are they very fragile and have to be encased in glass or polycarbonate sheets?
4. Is it relatively easy to get efficient results from PV’s?
5. What is the price of each PV cell?
6. What is the amount of electricity a typical family house needs to generate for self sufficiency? Is it 4KW/day? And is self sufficiency achievable with PV’s in Europe? How many cells would you have to install to get this?
Can they then be built into a mesh/grid of cables which collects the power each cell generates and gathered to a power collection point such as batteries?
7. Is the difficult part of PV energy the storage of the electricity generated?
Sorry to ask so many questions but It isn’t easy to find useful information to help me in my project.
Many thanks and I look forward to hearing from you.
Hugh