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.
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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.
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.
I didn’t mean they only last 2 years but battery degradation is a pretty common and known thing.
By a quick search I didn’t find any claim of storage battery lifetimes outside of 10-15 years, so there doesn’t seem to be a breakthrough in tech I wasn’t aware of. 15 years is hardly the lifetime of a house, so you certainly don’t “buy only once”.
Solar panels also don’t work indefinitely but their efficiency degradation is more on par with the lifetime of major parts of the building, like the roof itself.
The comparison commodity was Gas. Does something that can only be consumed once even have a lifetime?
Sure, but the cost of batteries is at the point where even with replacements every 10-15 years you’ll spend less than you would buying power from the grid.
You’re either an astroturfer or useful idiot spreading oil lobby talking points.
Either you believe the climate science or you don’t. If you do, you know that we don’t have time for industry protectionism.
Europeans demolished their manufacturing sector when they stripped all the wiring out of the walls during the austerity years.
You can’t blame people for buying foreign when you’ve been defunding domestic infrastructure for over a decade.
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.
If EU wants to compete they’re welcome to utilize the same style of subsidies that enabled China to produce these so cheaply.