The sun goes down on solar

[xchrom]

http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/1742562-sun-goes-down-solar

It wasn’t that long ago that Q-Cells, once the biggest solar cell manufacturer in the world, was seen as an energy company of the future. Even in the midst of the financial crisis it was still considered a money-making machine and candidate for DAX, a blue-chip stock market index trading at the Frankfurt stock exchange.

It was around Q-Cells’ manufacturing plants in the town of Bitterfeld-Wolfen, in a former brown-coal area in Saxony-Anhalt, that the so-called Solar Valley, named after California's Silicon Valley, grew up.

Since then it has grown a lot darker in Solar Valley. With the collapse of Q-Cells, the valley is going through its darkest hour. The energy company of the future is threatening to become an energy company with no future. In 2011 Q-Cells lost €846 million. Today Solar Valley is threatened with a clearcutting of jobs, though many of the 2,200 employees of Q-Cells are still at work.

Thousands of small companies will suffer

Bankruptcy is a new shock for the German solar industry. This is the fourth major bankruptcy so far, exposing the serious crisis in the industry and making it clear just how far behind Germany's solar companies have been left by their Asian competitors – despite the billions in funding. And now, of all times, just when solar power is gradually becoming competitive. The blows keep coming faster.


*** we in the west really need to get solar manufacturing right.
we need it for the jobs and we need to not give it away to cheap labor countries.

[Confusious]

1. It' not a matter of getting it right

We gave the solar makers 500 million, china gives theirs 5 billion.

If we had the money, we could do that, but we gave it all to China, the oil companies and the coal companies, and the Republicans don't care, so they're no help.

For the most part, the democrats aren't much better.

We're fucked in this country.

(Sorry, in my "we're fucked" pissy mood. tired of the morons and idiots running this country)

[Yo_Mama]

3. The article is about German solar manufacturers.

Not US manufacturers. The Germans effectively gave massive subsidies to their market, and it worked until China elbowed in on the deal.

China actually over-subsidized their energy, and as a result they are going to be in a shakeout for several years.

It's highly doubtful that US manufacturers could ever compete on mass market solar panels with China. Germans sure can't.

[Confusious]

5. Final statement by the OP

*** we in the west really need to get solar manufacturing right.
we need it for the jobs and we need to not give it away to cheap labor countries.

I took that to mean the United States.

[Yo_Mama]

2. Yeah, well the sun reliably rises too

The sun is going down on the German industry, but the solar panels are still going to be made, just in China.

[garybeck]

4. The solar industry will not go away

there will be bumps in the road. companies will make bad decisions. new companies will emerge. there's no way to stop it. as long as the sun shines the solar industry will be here and it will continue to grow.