Solar module prices reached a new low this week, says Leen van Bellen, business development manager Europe for Search4Solar, a European purchasing and selling platform for solar products. He tells pv magazine that prices will remain low in the short term.
It’s kinda good but it completely destroyed the European manufacturing for solar
When panels were 30c/watt, projects at $1/watt in EU and US happened. 70c/watt was spent on labour, copper, support structures, and grid connection equipment. All of those can be locally produced, with possible exception of last item.
At 6c/watt, that is over 90% of power projects are local economy boosting instead of 70%. It provides cheaper energy that is useful for industrialization and cost of living benefits too. US tariffs on solar are entirely about protecting oil/gas extortion power instead of a $10B solar production industry that needs fairly expensive support.
Solar imports does not cause energy dependence. You have power for 30+ years with no reliance on continuous fuel supplies. Shoes and apparel is a $450B industry in US. You need new supplies every year, and it makes much more sense to secure supply in that industry for war on the world purposes.
By providing big subsidies to green energy developement. Something the EU could also have done but refused to. And so they lost their entire lead.
Yep the EU will be beholden to a dictatorial regime again. Instead of placating Putin for gas it will be Xi for solar panels and batteries.
At least those items you only need to buy once.
What? Have you ever had a battery powered device for longer than 2 years?
All of them, plus storage batteries are under much less abuse and are different chemistry that lasts a lot longer.
It is good, period.
Local manufacturing is politically advantageous and may employ some people at the same time, but that’s where benefits end.
Europe didn’t reject Chinese face masks during COVID-19, and Europe shouldn’t reject Chinese solar during a climate emergency.
Solve that first, and political struggles later.
It’s not only a political struggle. Working conditions are tremendously better in Europe, Environmental Protection as well. Manufacturing photovoltaics takes a huge pile of chemicals that need to be handled properly to not cause any harm to the environment - China neither cares nor has any other incentives to actually do this properly, which is exactly why they are so cheap. Theres also the issue of poor quality, that if you’re manufacturing something that can have a significant impact on the environment, it should “count” and not be waste 10 years later.
Not only that, China’s subsidies are utterly unfair.
Destroying the environment in one part of the world to “save” a different one due to climate change is just ridiculously stupid and simple minded.
Source for this? Cadmium is exclusive to 1 US manufacturer.