The Sanyo HIT 190 is a 190 watt solar panel that features both crystalline silicon and amorphous silicon.

It vastly reduces the amount of silicon wafer required to produce a single panel, making them equally effective and less costly to produce.

Sanyo solar panels are receiving great marks for both overall efficiency and high temperature production.

It sounds counterintuitive, but solar panels actually become less effective in high temperatures, and knowing how yours will perform during those hot summer days will make a big difference in your power production.

Sanyo Solar Panels

Sanyo is a generalized technology company that makes everything from batteries to cell phones. They produce cameras, flash drives, washing machines and televisions. With all this in their company profile, it may come as a surprise that Sanyo is also investing in solar power. However, like many technology companies, they already have a strong infrastructure for dealing with silicon, and they have solidified a supply line for silicon wafers.

Those two factors are among the technological hurdles that any company interested in creating solar panels must overcome. There are ways to make panels without silicon wafers, but many companies lack the technology to implement them. String ribbon and thin film technology both promise a way for us to use non-wafer silicon, which is also known as amorphous silicon.

The major advantage of amorphous silicon over wafers is that there is a much smaller industrial demand for amorphous silicon. This is because things such as computers, cell phones, and digital cameras all require circuits engraved on silicon wafers. A company such as Sanyo can get a much cheaper supply of amorphous silicon. If they have the technology to turn the silicon into solar panels; then that translates into a much less expensive product.

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