Posted by TNT on October 31, 2005, 1:07 pm
There has been several stories in the past about how solar cells were going
to be built on a single roll, in a long length and the cost would be 1/10 of
the price, well it seems like they were all a bunch of crap to collect
investment money. What happened to them?
> Offgridman wrote:
>> If you go back and look in recent past when BP and Shell bought out
>> solar panel mfgs the prices stopped declining and started to rise right
>> after.
> According to every market survey I've seen, prices started rising at the
> end of last year. Neither of them bought out manufacturers anywhere near
> then. Besides which, neither Shell nor BP have the kind of market share
> (6.0% and 7.1%, respectively) to influence the market that way. At a
> minimum you'd have to have Sharp and its 27.1% share of the market
> involved. And Sharp, if anything, has been acting to *reduce* prices in
> the US by expanding here (prior to last year they had no US PV presence)
> and increasing the total supply of modules available.
>> Look up my old posts on the subject. My predictions of what they
>> would do to the solar panel market was correct. Heck they did not even
>> bother to change the story they give the public. "Shortage of raw
>> materials"
> Try buying silicon for double the price it was 18 months ago. If you can
> even *find* someone who has silicon to sell you, they'll charge you a lot
> more than that for it.
> However, I don't recall anybody claiming a raw material shortage prior to
> that. I *do* recall that they couldn't increase production capacity fast
> enough to keep up with demand -- it's pretty tough for a business in *any*
> industry to raise enough capital to double, triple, or quadruple
> production in the span of a single year.
Posted by R.H. Allen on October 31, 2005, 2:43 pm
TNT wrote:
> There has been several stories in the past about how solar cells were going
> to be built on a single roll, in a long length and the cost would be 1/10 of
> the price, well it seems like they were all a bunch of crap to collect
> investment money. What happened to them?
Some are in production -- if I'm not mistaken, at least some of United
Solar's amorphous silicon panels are manufactured this way. Others were
in the early R&D phases when they were announced and are still under
development. I figure some of them will fail to even make it to
commercial production, while others will be found in commercial products
sometime in the next 5 years or so. The biggest proponents of these
technologies will tell you that commercial production is right around
the corner, and I think they honestly believe that. But I also think
they underappreciate how difficult it is to take a product from the
laboratory to the production line, particularly when the underlying
technology is new and there's no experience to draw from.
Posted by Ecnerwal on October 31, 2005, 7:51 pm
> There has been several stories in the past about how solar cells were going
> to be built on a single roll, in a long length and the cost would be 1/10 of
> the price, well it seems like they were all a bunch of crap to collect
> investment money. What happened to them?
They cost about 15/10 the price of traditional crystalline cells, and if
you want to pay that sort of premium, you can buy them. Low price claims
remain so much smoke and mirrors, as per usual.
--
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>> If you go back and look in recent past when BP and Shell bought out
>> solar panel mfgs the prices stopped declining and started to rise right
>> after.
> According to every market survey I've seen, prices started rising at the
> end of last year. Neither of them bought out manufacturers anywhere near
> then. Besides which, neither Shell nor BP have the kind of market share
> (6.0% and 7.1%, respectively) to influence the market that way. At a
> minimum you'd have to have Sharp and its 27.1% share of the market
> involved. And Sharp, if anything, has been acting to *reduce* prices in
> the US by expanding here (prior to last year they had no US PV presence)
> and increasing the total supply of modules available.
>> Look up my old posts on the subject. My predictions of what they
>> would do to the solar panel market was correct. Heck they did not even
>> bother to change the story they give the public. "Shortage of raw
>> materials"
> Try buying silicon for double the price it was 18 months ago. If you can
> even *find* someone who has silicon to sell you, they'll charge you a lot
> more than that for it.
> However, I don't recall anybody claiming a raw material shortage prior to
> that. I *do* recall that they couldn't increase production capacity fast
> enough to keep up with demand -- it's pretty tough for a business in *any*
> industry to raise enough capital to double, triple, or quadruple
> production in the span of a single year.