Rutgers’ Chinese Solar Panels Show Clean-Energy Shift

[Joanne98]

July 23 (Bloomberg) -- At Rutgers University in New Jersey, 7,600 panels convert sunlight into electricity, saving some $200,000 in energy costs this year in the biggest solar-power experiment at a U.S. college.

Yingli Green Energy Holding Co., China’s second-largest solar-panel maker, supplied the $10 million project. Yingli is one of several Chinese manufacturers that have slashed costs to reduce global prices for solar modules by about 50 percent in two years. The drive made them more affordable for buyers from Rutgers to Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the biggest U.S. retailer.

“It’s all about economics,” said Chief Executive Officer Al Bucknam of SunDurance Energy, the South Plainfield, New Jersey, installer that picked Yingli over Western competitors on price and helped sell the deal to Rutgers as a money-saver.

China is slashing prices and moving to dominate solar energy in the way Japanese manufacturers ruled consumer electronics decades ago. The price declines inch the cost of solar energy toward what’s called grid parity, or renewable electricity at the same prices charged for conventional power.

“The ability of the Chinese to manufacture at scale is a very big reason why the cost of these panels has come down,” said Kathleen A. McGinty at venture capital firm Element Partners in Radnor, Pennsylvania. “They’re a big part of the reason why we can even start to talk about grid parity.”

Price Parity

Sun power may become as cheap as the retail price of grid- delivered electricity in certain markets as early as 2013, according to a June 29 report by Pike Research, a Boulder, Colorado, clean-energy consultant.

The European Photovoltaic Industry Association, a trade group, forecasts parity by 2010 in some southern parts of Italy, by 2012 in several regions of Spain, and 2015 in Germany.

Solar installations are spreading worldwide as governments from China to the U.K. and Italy offer subsidies, costs fall and cities seek to create jobs. Rutgers got a New Jersey state grant for half its solar plant costs, which included installation and an undisclosed price for the Yingli panels. Wal-Mart last month finished installing solar modules on two California stores that provide as much as 30 percent of their electricity.

China’s manufacturers grabbed 43 percent of the global photovoltaic-panel market in the last six years, pricing products as much as 20 percent cheaper than European offerings, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Chinese firms shipped 3,300 megawatts of panels worth $6.6 billion last year, enough to power about 2.6 million U.S. homes.

Asia’s ‘Vast Factories’

http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aRsECd.1at58&pos=12

While we were fighting with the lowlife lying scumbag conservatives about stimulis, the Chinese grabbed the ball and ran with it!

[jtuck004]

1. I wish I could recommend this to the front page as a permanent fixture

but I fear it won't do any good. We have been talking about it for months, but very few people seem to get it. I wonder if we could make it an app on an iphone - it runs, sends all your contact information overseas, destroys your phone and signs you up for a 20 year plan at a higher price. (I wish that was funny, or at least a bad analogy).

I was at a friend's home on the 4th. One of her guests is one of a handful of global experts in polysilicone. He had worked at plants in the U.S., but now contracts in China because all the plants and jobs are there.

China has 40 polysilicone plants under construction or operating, they are investing Billions to stimulate their country for manufacturing. The theory here for years is that we can export the handwork, and do the expensive design side. The shortfall of that is that not everyone wants to be design engineers, architects, doctors, etc, which removes the good working jobs that pay people to buy the things they are manufacturing - the way many in our country found a better life until about 40 years ago.

The U.S. has complained for years that China is copying us, they have no innovation, and are taking our jobs. While we are doing that they are sending people to school like mad with the express aim of developing design engineers that can do the innovation side as well. They have decided to take the lead in alternative energy and silicon, two things the future is likely to need in great quantities.

I saw an article about a week ago that said China just surpassed us in oil demand, and they haven't industrialized anywhwere near their whole country yet. So they are getting their oil lined up, and investing in what will take it's place, just like we should be doing.

We desperately need to have people in the administration who will invest in this country, yet right now we have a Federal Reserve Chairman, an avowed supply-sider and Republican, who is attemtpting to re-inflate the financial firms that brought us to the crisis we are in with taxpayer dollars, More here..., and an administration who publicly states that they are on the same page. This policy is quite likely to keep wealth moving into the hands of the people who already have much of it, and keep unemployment high for a long time. And it will play in the hands of our opponents like a fiddle in the hands of a master, despite all the noble accomplishements of the current government.

Damn. Unemployment is gonna be high out to 2020, at least, barring any new big technology surprises or policy changes. And people are gonna lose much of their social safety net. And we are doing it to ourselves...


Thanks for that.

[Crazy Dave]

3. Clean energy was the only possible economic boom for us but it's now gone

Like the dot-com boom in the 90s and the housing boom the past decade, alternative and renewable energy should have been our next big growth and financial boom. Research, development, manufacturing and sales, rebuilding the majority of our infrastructure and autos with green energy would have probably created a labor shortage in this country for the next ten years but now it will never happen and there's really nothing new out there that will be the next boom except maybe more wars.

[blue97keet]

10. The factories making solar panels in China powered by what? Solar panels?

Methinks not. Now that's energy efficiency for ya. What's the global efficiency equation overall?

[westerebus]

2. Has any one seen my extra $trillion?

You know, the one I was going to use for green jobs? I know I had an extra $ trillion lying around here some where.

May be in my other suit. The G-20 bark blue one. Nope not there.

Who moved my $ trillion? Dam, I hate when that happens.

I looked under the HCR bill and it's not there.

Ben said he hasn't seen it.

Not in the Fin reg folder either. Not that Goldman wouldn't screw that pooch too.

Nancy said she has not idea where it could have gone.

BP can only change half a $ trillion, so they say.

Harry said he didn't know we had an extra $ trillion.

There it is.

Pay to the order of Af-Pak.

Dam. I though I lost it. Wow. What a relief.

Exports? Jobs?

What was the question?

Faux news said......

And so it goes.

[Sentath]

4. Thats excellent.

Got a laugh out of a friend with it.

[westerebus]

6. Thanks. n/t

[blue97keet]

9. The six hundred trillion derivatives market

or toxic toys from China. That's where our "green jobs" went.

[autorank]

5. k*r

Yes indeed. But didn't you hear, tax cuts provide infinite power;) to the 'leet!

[pscot]

7. Free marked capitalism will save us

Any day now.

[upi402]

8. We need an immediate National Recovery Act II -for solar, wind, batteries

If we are to ever recover we need to do this AND re-install tariffs that match what other countries impose on us.