Problems In The Solar Industry

The latest edition of the Watt Weekly Podcast has an interview with Sass Peress, the CEO of ICP Solar, a solar power manufacturing company in Montreal Canada. On the status of the solar industry, Peress said that the growth is huge because of a “giant vacuum sucking sounds coming nout of Germany and Japan for every single solar cell being produced” and California may soon become the same. This has left manufacturers scrambling to catch up to the demand but there is a disfunction in the supply chain with an overcapacity in everything except for the silicon feedsotck. The big problem is that the “solar industry is the poor cousin of the microchip industry”, having to buy the leftover silicon that microchips couldn’t use because the grade wasn’t high enough. This has resulted in a 5% per year increase in the cost of solar cells rather than a steady 5% per year decrease in solar panel costs previously sustained by the industry. Another serious problem is that some companies are grossly overstating their maximum power outputs, sometimes by over 50% and this is making some consumers, especially in Kenya (interestingly enough), wary of investing in solar power.