Originally published on CleanTechnica
by James Ayre
Panasonic’s solar photovoltaic HIT module production tech will pass the 20-year milestone this year, according to an email Panasonic sent to CleanTechnica. The company first debuted its patented, high-efficiency photovoltaic module back in 1997 and has since produced more than 18 million HIT modules.
These solar photovoltaic modules make use of the company’s unique heterojunction technology and its pioneering heterojunction solar cells, which utilize “a combination of monocrystalline and amorphous solar technologies to deliver greater solar energy, combined with unmatched product reliability, and outstanding manufacturing quality,” as the email put it.
The Director of the Panasonic Solar Systems Business Unit, Kazuhiro Yoshida, commented on the milestone: “Panasonic is very proud to celebrate the 20-year anniversary of producing Photovoltaic Module HIT. When we began manufacturing this patented technology our vision was to create a better world and help accelerate the world’s much-needed adoption of clean energy. We now feel more and more responsible for this original vision even after 20 years and will do our best possible efforts to go beyond the technological boundaries of photovoltaic energy conversion efficiency.”
Over the years that Panasonic has been selling solar photovoltaic HIT modules, there have been quite a lot of changes to the company’s offerings, with new conversion efficiency records being achieved regularly and thus improvements to consumer offerings being a regular occurrence.
The most recent of these record-breaking events was last March, when Panasonic achieved a 23.8% module conversion efficiency — at the time a world record for module conversion efficiency, but since eclipsed.
