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Silevo's hybrid solar cell manufacturing facility was in Hangzhou, which is in Zhejiang province, on the east coast of China, nowhere near the supposed 'slave l

Silevo's hybrid solar cell manufacturing facility was in Hangzhou, which is in Zhejiang province, on the east coast of China, nowhere near the supposed 'slave labor camps' in the far northwestern Xinjiang province. Solar City acquired Silevo on the premise they'd be able to import from Hangzhou and assemble in Buffalo, basically: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/solarcity-moves-into-manufacturing-with-silevo-takeover-analyst-blog-2014-06-18 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/solarcity-moves-into-manufac... However, the US government - which certainly doesn't worry about labor abuse in places like Saudi Arabia wrt oil production, or really anywhere wrt oil production, slapped tariffs on this, under both the administration of Obama (a coal-state Senator backed by coal and nuclear interests originally) as well as Trump (Republicans also being in the power of the investor-owned electricity sector). The tariffs are a joke - a blatantly transparent effort to slow the growth of the solar industry in the USA, to protect the profits of the investor-owned utility crowd and their invested partners in the fossil energy sector: https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2016/06/20/solarcitysilevo-must-pay-duties-on-chinese-made-pv-cells/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2016/06/20/solarcitysilevo-must-... > "Last Friday, the International Trade Association gave its final ruling on whether or not Silevo’s “Triex” heterojunction PV cells are subject to anti-dumping and anti-subsidy import duties on cells and modules imported from China. The result was the same as the preliminary ruling in April, and verified that SolarCity must pay duties on Triex cells made in China." So that's what the whole issue is about - but there's a more blatantly obvious issue, which is that no company or research center in the USA has mastered high-volume monocrystalline silicon ingot production, while Chinese companies have. Why? The US doesn't provide R&D funding for this kind of technological development, hence China is well ahead. In contrast in China this has been under steady development for at least a decade: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/11/29/new-manufacturing-process-for-high-quality-mono-cast-ingots/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/11/29/new-manufacturing-pro...

bsder 4y ago
> So that's what the whole issue is about - but there's a more blatantly obvious issue, which is that no company or research center in the USA has mastered high-volume monocrystalline silicon ingot production, while Chinese companies have. Why? The US doesn't provide R&D funding for this kind of technological development, hence China is well ahead. In contrast in China this has been under steady development for at least a decade: Sorry, but that's HIGHLY revisionist. China dumped cheap, crappy solar cells into the US and wiped out all the domestic manufacturers. I knew of lots of solar installers who got out of the business because they knew they were going to be on the hook when the Chinese solar cells all died early. And in 5 years that was exactly what happened. These tariffs didn't come fast enough, unfortunately. Another part of the reason why solar installations have slowed down considerably is directly attributable to the fact that homeowners now know that the Chinese cells won't actually last the 15-20 years that they are supposed to. So, unless you can amortize over 5 years, nobody is going to risk installing them. Electricity is neither expensive enough nor sunlight plentiful enough to pull that off in 90+% of the US.

bsder 4y ago

> So that's what the whole issue is about - but there's a more blatantly obvious issue, which is that no company or research center in the USA has mastered high-volume monocrystalline silicon ingot production, while Chinese companies have. Why? The US doesn't provide R&D funding for this kind of technological development, hence China is well ahead. In contrast in China this has been under steady development for at least a decade: Sorry, but that's HIGHLY revisionist. China dumped cheap, crappy solar cells into the US and wiped out all the domestic manufacturers. I knew of lots of solar installers who got out of the business because they knew they were going to be on the hook when the Chinese solar cells all died early. And in 5 years that was exactly what happened. These tariffs didn't come fast enough, unfortunately. Another part of the reason why solar installations have slowed down considerably is directly attributable to the fact that homeowners now know that the Chinese cells won't actually last the 15-20 years that they are supposed to. So, unless you can amortize over 5 years, nobody is going to risk installing them. Electricity is neither expensive enough nor sunlight plentiful enough to pull that off in 90+% of the US.