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Solyndra's failure had nothing to do with technology at all. They failed because Chinese manufacturers undercut them in price, quite severely. Allegations of d

Solyndra's failure had nothing to do with technology at all. They failed because Chinese manufacturers undercut them in price, quite severely. Allegations of dumping (or fraud, on the other side) notwithstanding, what this says is that solar is actually much cheaper and more readily available than Solyndra's investors expected. And that's sort of the opposite of your point, no? Similarly the Tesla plant is doing exactly what it said it was going to do, when it was supposed to be finished, within the budget it had, and AFAIK is making money. You're asserting that it can't scale because it... worked?! As far as the Pakistani misdesign, yeah, I'm sure that's going to happen too. Nothing works perfectly. Nonetheless this seems like a pretty oddly constructed list of reasons why solar is "much worse in production". It seems to my eyes like it's doing much better than expected.

walrus01 6y ago
I don't disagree on the point that they were undercut in price. But they were also undercut in price because commodity normal PV panels composed of 156mm polycrystalline or monocrystalline cells (60 or 72 cells) are much cheaper to manufacture than the weird proprietary system they developed. They are also much cheaper to mount on large roofs (home depot/walmart warehouse sized) or on large scale 300kW+ ground arrays. Ordinary 60 or 72-cell panels are DEAD SIMPLE in their construction. It's a sandwich of a backing material, encapsulation for the cells and soldering, glass in front, with an aluminum frame and a junction box on the rear. Solyndra "panels" are fragile, hard to transport, hard to mount, everything about them was a pain in the ass.
- nappy 6y ago
  You can't fund potentially breakthrough innovation and research and only get one tail of the distribution. It's a good thing, not a bad one, the the US government providers funding, and in this case, interest free loans for projects that sometimes fail.
  - jaggederest 6y ago
    As I always say in software projects, if some of your tasks aren't failing, you're not being ambitious enough in your goals, or are not ditching ineffective work soon enough.
dgut 6y ago
Solar power is alive and kicking in Spain and increasingly more cost effective (removing the need of subsidies since 2018).
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Spain just shuttered half of their coal capacity at the end of June 2020 partially due to this (also because of emissions requirements owners didn’t want to meet), and intend to shutter the rest by 2025 (additional wind power and pumped hydro for storage is coming online in that time). https://english.elpais.com/economy_and_business/2020-06-29/spain-to-close-half-its-coal-fired-power-stations.html https://english.elpais.com/economy_and_business/2020-06-29/s...
dungdang 6y ago
he is arguing that your brita pitcher working does not mean it's suitable to scale for your city's water purification system. the success of the tesla deployment for its intended purpose hence means zero for large scale systems. apparently you also think the chinese government using its people's money to sell panels at a loss makes the panel cost less to produce, proving the opposite of his point? do you actually have a point, beyond 'your point is false because of this fake argument i made up?'

walrus01 6y ago

I don't disagree on the point that they were undercut in price. But they were also undercut in price because commodity normal PV panels composed of 156mm polycrystalline or monocrystalline cells (60 or 72 cells) are much cheaper to manufacture than the weird proprietary system they developed. They are also much cheaper to mount on large roofs (home depot/walmart warehouse sized) or on large scale 300kW+ ground arrays. Ordinary 60 or 72-cell panels are DEAD SIMPLE in their construction. It's a sandwich of a backing material, encapsulation for the cells and soldering, glass in front, with an aluminum frame and a junction box on the rear. Solyndra "panels" are fragile, hard to transport, hard to mount, everything about them was a pain in the ass.

nappy 6y ago
You can't fund potentially breakthrough innovation and research and only get one tail of the distribution. It's a good thing, not a bad one, the the US government providers funding, and in this case, interest free loans for projects that sometimes fail.
- jaggederest 6y ago
  As I always say in software projects, if some of your tasks aren't failing, you're not being ambitious enough in your goals, or are not ditching ineffective work soon enough.

dgut 6y ago

Solar power is alive and kicking in Spain and increasingly more cost effective (removing the need of subsidies since 2018).

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Spain just shuttered half of their coal capacity at the end of June 2020 partially due to this (also because of emissions requirements owners didn’t want to meet), and intend to shutter the rest by 2025 (additional wind power and pumped hydro for storage is coming online in that time). https://english.elpais.com/economy_and_business/2020-06-29/spain-to-close-half-its-coal-fired-power-stations.html https://english.elpais.com/economy_and_business/2020-06-29/s...

dungdang 6y ago

he is arguing that your brita pitcher working does not mean it's suitable to scale for your city's water purification system. the success of the tesla deployment for its intended purpose hence means zero for large scale systems. apparently you also think the chinese government using its people's money to sell panels at a loss makes the panel cost less to produce, proving the opposite of his point? do you actually have a point, beyond 'your point is false because of this fake argument i made up?'