Many PV manufacturers around the world are used to receiving a friendly call from ENF's business analysts, asking details about their companies in order to profile their organisations in our market research reports – in fact ENF calls over 1,000 solar ingot, wafer, cell and panel manufacturers each year to profile their companies.
In recent years we have expanded our coverage to record the machines and materials used by each manufacturer. So with over 1,000 companies keeping us updated with what machines and materials they use we have decided to share some of this valuable information with the whole industry. Hence we are now publishing details of how many manufacturers are known to ENF to use each equipment and material brand. In terms of reliability of the information – we use only those brands told to us by the ingot/wafer/cell/panel manufacturer themselves. In many cases equipment and material companies will co-operate with ENF to share their customer lists, but we only ever use this as reference and those customers must confirm their usage to ENF for us to include it.
The numbers are not perfect as they reference the number of known customers only and don't account for the volume each customer buys (the volume each customer buys can be found in our commercial reports). However the information helps to give an indication of popularity of each brand, and we hope that our website visitors find this additional information useful when researching suppliers.
Recently added information to the site:
Production numbers (as given to us by the manufacturers): Ingot Wafer Cell Panel
Number of known customers (exclusively from over 1,000 customers of equipment and material brands):
Ingot Equipment: Puller; DSS furnace; Ingot cutting machine; Ingot testing
Ingot Materials: Polysilicon; Quartz crucible
Wafer Equipment: Wire saw; Wafer cleaning machine; Wafer testing
Wafer Materials: Saw wire; SiC and cutting liquid
Cell Equipment: Wafer cleaning machine; Diffusion furnace; Etching equipment and PECVD; Screen printer; Firing furnace; Cell Tester/Sorter; Turn-key system
Cell Materials: Wafer; Silver/Aluminium paste; Screen
Panel Equipment: Laser scriber; Stringer/Tabber; Laminator; Framing machine; Panel tester; Crystalline panel turn-key; Thin-film panel turn-key
Panel Materials: Cell; Glass; EVA and Back sheet; Junction box