Essay by Eric Worrall
First published on JoNova; Despite green claims renewables are the cheapest form of power, renewable manufacturers are struggling to survive Europe’s soaring energy prices.
European solar PV manufacturing at risk from soaring power prices – Rystad
By Jules Scully
October 6, 2022Around 35GW of PV manufacturing projects in Europe are at risk of being mothballed as elevated power prices damage the continent’s efforts to build a solar supply chain, research from Rystad Energy suggests.
…
Audun Martinsen, Rystad Energy’s head of energy service research, said high power prices not only pose a significant threat to European decarbonisation efforts but could also result in increased reliance on overseas manufacturing.
“Building a reliable domestic low-carbon supply chain is essential if the continent is going to stick to its goals, including the REPowerEU plan, but as things stand, that is in serious jeopardy,” he added.
…
Read more: https://www.pv-tech.org/european-solar-pv-manufacturing-at-risk-from-soaring-power-prices-rystad/
Shortly after the above was published, a French solar module plant was closed;
Maxeon closes French solar module manufacturing plant
By Jules Scully
October 7, 2022Maxeon Solar Technologies has shut down a PV module manufacturing plant in France, citing a challenging price environment.
The facility was impacted by rising costs and taxes on raw material imports, according to a Maxeon spokesperson.
“The production price of the Porcelette plant no longer allows us to be competitive on the European market,” the spokesperson said in a statement sent to PV Tech.
Located in northeastern France, the facility was inaugurated in 2012. According to press release from that year, the plant had a 44MWp production line capable of producing 150,000 solar panels annually.
…
Read more: https://www.pv-tech.org/maxeon-closes-french-solar-module-manufacturing-plant/
The obvious question, if renewables are so cheap, why don’t these plants relocate to a large plot of land, disconnect from the grid, and power their manufacturing facilities from their own low cost renewable energy products?
Seems an obvious solution – but for some reason renewable manufacturers seem to be choosing to shutter their plants, rather than switching to consuming their own product.
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Yes the skyrocetingbprice of fossil fuel is badly hurting industry globally. Well that happens when the global price of oil is set by Russia and the Gulf Arabs
Perhaps the Greens are following this post WW2 proposal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_plans_for_German_industry_after_World_War_II
That’s a great line Eric, “The obvious question, if renewables are so cheap, why don’t these plants relocate to a large plot of land, disconnect from the grid, and power their manufacturing facilities from their own low cost renewable energy products?”
In the US Silicon Valley we say something similar about the software that we use to conduct business, “Eating your own dog food”. Many times the marketing and sales people are out in the field promoting the company software but back in the engineering labs we’re often using competitors software because it just works better.
Hasn’t it been common knowledge for more than 20 years that Renewable Energy is Not Self Sustainable? Worse, Renewable Energy is not even “Sustainable” in the sense that it is more destructive to the Environment than Coal, NG or Nuclear. The only thing GREEN about Renewable Energy is the Cash that the proponents rake in from subsidies, interest free loans and Declaring bankruptcy after they make a fortune and actually make nothing, following the pattern of Solyndra..
The “obvious” is never what it seems.
Bjorn Lomborg asked the obvious question: Why do EVs need subsidies if people really wanted them?
WSJ Opinion: Policies Pushing Electric Vehicles Show Why Few People Want OneThey wouldn’t need huge subsidies to sell if they really were a good choice, and consumers know that.
Bjorn Lomborg
September 9, 2022 02:56 pm ET
Also, I read just this week that they do not do well when flooded. Several EV fires in FL after the recent Hurricane. This also points out the fact the Special attention is going to be needed for EV Charging Stations. Under ground power distribution of electricity my do well in Tornadoes, severe rain/snow storms and most hurricanes but not well in floods unless designed to withstand maximum/100 year flood height. Worse you could get Boiled alive if you drive into a flooded underpass – like the old baby bottle heaters that heated water with electricity passing through the water.
Hybrids have been a popular choice for company cars in the UK because the tax system incentivises them. Someone looked into the use-patterns of such cars and found that most drivers of them rarely if ever used electric drive.
I’ll try to come up with a pertinent comment as soon as I stop laughing.
Solar Cell Manufacturers were hoist with their own petard.
I have 24 solar panels on the roof of my home. I am paid 7 cents a unit which goes directly into the national grid – I don’t get to use any of it in my home – then the electricity I use is taken out of the national grid and I am charged 23 cents a unit for what I use, which I am told is what it costs for the government to generate it, on top of a connection fee in the region of $45 every two months, so that I can use the national grid electricity. If I were able to run my home from the electricity I generate, I would be able to do that cost free, because I create more electricity than I use and I would have surplus electricity to waste.
Bureaucracy at its finest.
But you would need batteries and more panels to charge them so you would have power at night, when it was cloudy and rainy. Backup is not cheap.
But I don’t live in Europe or anywhere where you get rain and clouds most of the time – blue skies and warmth here, most of the year around, in fact by Christmas it will be in the mid 30’s Centigrade and on Christmas day I will probably be in my salt water swimming pool enjoying the heat, with sunnies on and a hat on my head, thinking of you all getting appropriately frozen, over there!!
Everywhere on Earth has more hours when the sun is down or blocked by rain clouds than hours of sunlight.
This is the new green economy the politicians have been promising. Thousands of manufacturing jobs … In China.
A snake eating it’s own tale. Wonder how this ends?
Of course copper is produced using electrolysis. There goes any chance of producing cheap motors, and the wiring needed to increase the infrastructure to handle 30 million electric cars in the UK!
If renewable energy infrastructure had to be manufactured using renewable energy, there wouldn’t be any. That’s why I propose making that mandatory, as a feel-good trojan horse that self-knee-caps renewable energy production.
Renewable energy cost wouldn’t shut down a site in France which is ~90% nuclear.