The comments from advisers with knowledge of the mainland government’s thinking cast doubt on whether Suntech, the largest solar panel manufacturer in 2011, can avoid bankruptcy. The company said on March 11 that it had obtained an agreement from more than 60 per cent of bond holders to delay repayment for two months on US$541 million of notes due today.
h/t Maz2
Silly buggers think green tech would sell in China. In a nation which has NEVER signed on to any UN/Globalist environmental accord there is little market for these clunky inefficient austerity technologies. Only decadent urban greentards in the US and Canada have the green guilt syndrome enough to punish themselves with inefficient energy alternatives.
Solar panels . . . a sunset industry.
We’ll park them right beside buggy whips in the Failed Business Hall of Shame.
“We do not need the smelly great mirror”, says Google Translate. Indeed.
or “We do not need a stinking giant mirror”
Behold the power of SDA: Google Translate is temporarily unavailable!
Oh the humanity !
Letting an industry fail , job losses , tech losses, all more than we could ever bear. How could a communist government let the free market dictate the viability of a company. Have they learnt nothing from the west and our banking and automotive sectors?
What a sad day for China and The World , letting the marketplace speak !!
Life span estimates of solar panels tend to be optimistic – all the way up to 40 years.
But there’s a dirty secret that purveyors of solar panels don’t talk about – and few consumers bother to ask.
What they won’t tell you is that efficiency degrades as panel age – be some estimates 4% per year of service.
Solar panels have their place. I have a very nice solar powered scientific calculator which uses a tiny solar cell to charge a large electrolytic capacitor which is the power source for the calculator. Nice calculator that’s worked just fine for at least 15 years now. This is appropriate use of solar energy harvesting technology.
We no longer chain tens of thousands of slaves next to boat oars, and draft horses are seen only in agricultural fairs in contests to see which horse can drag the most weight. We have much better energy sources now which are reliable, of high energy density and require a lot less maintenance than a boat filled with slave rowers.
Solar power definitely has a place in remote locations that are close to the equator or backed up by alternative energy supplies, almost always a gasoline generator. For micropower electronics, the only energy source they might need is a modest solar cell and ultracapacitor for electricity storage. The acres of solar cells that occupy the wet dreams of watermelons are the modern equivalent of using 50,000 slaves to row an aircraft carrier.
Muscle power is a low energy source with peak output of a well trained athlete being perhaps 1 KW for very brief periods of time and not many people are able to generate 500 W of power on a sustained basis. Human muscle power is thus low energy density and the 1 KW/m^2 figure for solar power has as much validity as packing a group of humans tightly together and saying they’re capable of 2 Kw of power output.
So, expect the manufacturers of cheap poor quality large solar cells designed for the modern equivalent of the rower powered aircraft carrier to fail one after the other. Manufacturers of good quality solar cells, that are used as appropriate power sources, will continue to flourish as there’s more and more of a market for self-powered electronic devices when one is many miles from the nearest generator or power line but the sun is shining down strongly on ones battery dead cell phone.
Even the communists are being forced to let businesses go bankrupt.
Look around the world. Everyone is in the same boat. The geniuses in charge are spending money they do not have on things that do not work. Everyone, everywhere is kicking the can down the road by printing money and running deficits. And all the while hoping they can keep things together just a little while longer. Even though they know it will all fall apart eventually.
How will they avoid the inevitable? They won’t. They are all hoping the other guy fails first, and then they can blame him when they fail too. Who will blink first? The EU (Greece, Spain, Italy), China, Japan, US, Argentina, Brazil, France? Maybe their political careers (but not their country’s Economy and people) will be saved by what they think is divine intervention? – A Nork or Iranian initiated nuclear exchange, Syrian War plague, or a meteorite?