Manufacturers and Certification
National Renewable Energy Laboratory tests and validates solar technologies. There are three reliable certifications of solar equipment: UL and IEEE (both U.S. standards) and IEC.
Solar cells are manufactured primarily in Japan, Germany, mainland China, Taiwan and the United States, though numerous other nations have or are acquiring significant solar cell production capacity. While technologies are constantly evolving toward higher efficiencies, the most effective cells for low cost electrical production are not necessarily those with the highest efficiency, but those with a balance between low-cost production and efficiency high enough to minimize area-related balance of systems cost. Those companies with large scale manufacturing technology for coating inexpensive substrates may, in fact, ultimately be the lowest cost net electricity producers, even with cell efficiencies that are lower than those of single-crystal technologies.
Read more about this topic: Solar Cell
Famous quotes containing the words manufacturers and:
“With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan,—mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufacturers and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)