Top 10 | The Ten Largest Solar PV Companies

Oliver Strube
June, 2010   

We get quite a few questions here at RenewableEnergyWorld.com about who the big players in each sector of the renewable energy industry are, so we decided to start pulling together some top 10 lists. Here are the top 10 producers of PV for 2009 according to a report from Photon International, ranked by actual production. Total global shipments and installations of photovoltaic cells and modules in 2009 was somewhere in the 7.5-8.5GW range with a total production capacity exceeding 12.5GW.

The top 10 Solar PV manufacturers in 2009 were:

1. 1100.0 MW First Solar
2. 704.0 MW Suntech
3. 595.0 MW Sharp
4. 586.0 MW Q-Cells
5. 525.3 MW Yingli
6. 520.0 MW JA Solar
7. 400.0 MW Kyocera
8. 399.0 MW Trina Solar
9. 397.0 MW SunPower
10. 368.0 MW Gintech

Thin films represented 16.8% of total global production in 2009, up from 12.5% in 2008. The top ten or the top thirteen since the last four are tied, thin-film producers were:

1. 1100 MW First Solar
2. 123   MW United Solar Ovonic
3. 94.0 MW Sharp
4. 60.0 MW Sunfilm
5. 50.0 MW Trony
6. 43.0 MW Solar Frontier
7. 42.0 MW Mitsubishi
8. 40.0 MW Kaneka
9. 40.0 MW Moser Baer
10. 30.0 MW Würth Solar
11. 30.0 MW Bosch (formerly Ersol)
12. 30.0 MW EPV
13. 30.0 MW Solyndra

More Top 10 lists are coming soon. What top 10 would you like to see? Let me know, leave a comment below.