From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t idau
So much for cheap solar power then!
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Europe’s solar power industry warned on Monday of a “precarious” situation for European solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturers as solar PV prices reached record lows.
Industry trade group SolarPower Europe said in a letter sent to the European Commission that European companies risk bankruptcies, which they said would hurt the EU’s goal of reshoring 30 GW of the solar PV supply chain.
Prices of PV modules have dropped by more than a quarter since the beginning of the year, according to SolarPower.
“This is creating concrete risks for companies to go into insolvency as their significant stock will need to be devalued,” SolarPower Europe said.
Strong demand, combined with large investments and fierce competition among Chinese suppliers led to overcapacities in the market and a price fall.
The industry calls on the European Commission to buy up European companies’ solar module stockpiles, to set up a Solar Manufacturing Bank at EU level and to boost demand for solar PV in Europe among others.
I often wonder what world the greenies live in. Their ability to understand future economics is sadly lacking. For instance, as more residential solar panels are installed the average demand on the power company infrastructure will fade downward – meaning that infrastructure will also physically fade down. Smaller sub-stations, smaller feeder routes, etc.
When something like a hurricane hits in Florida, thousands of line crews converge from all over the country with equipment and parts to repair the existing power company infrastructure – which will have faded down over time from lower average demand. Who is going to repair all the residential infrastructure? The power companies won’t do it. They won’t have the inventory of solar panels. The solar panel installation companies won’t do it because they couldn’t afford to maintain disaster-level inventories of spare parts. The residential population can’t afford to store away replacement for damaged infrastructure. Is the local, state, or federal governments going to do it? Doubtful.
That means that in a widespread natural disaster with lots of power interruptions, those interruptions are going to last a *lot* longer than they do today – along with all the corresponding human impact.
Where is this even being discussed? Certainly not by the politicians or by those pushing for “renewable” power. It’s the blind leading the blind for the most part. That’s not a good thing for those alive in the future.
Fortress Europe will prevail….all the way down.