By Jo Nova
Europe’s solar manufacturers are in a crisis
Forty year old German solar panel producers are closing factories they only opened three years ago.
The world now has the capacity to make 1,600 GW of solar panels annually, but demand has unexpectedly flat-lined — staying at barely 500GW. In a world awash with solar panels that no one needs, prices have fallen dramatically, but that hasn’t solved the glut which is so bad, people are using solar panels for fencing in Europe.
The CCP has bet big that the exponential growth curve in solar customers was going to keep being exponential. Instead, demand flattened off suddenly. Currently, 80% of the world’s solar panels are pouring out of China.
With impeccable timing, just weeks ago the Australian Government threw a billion dollars at a program to help Australia become a solar panel superfactory just at the moment when China is practically giving them away.
Can the solar industry keep the lights on?
Rachel Millard and Amanda Chu, Financial Times
“There is overcapacity in every segment, starting with polysilicon and finishing with the module,” said Yana Hryshko, head of global solar supply chain research at the consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
According to BloombergNEF, panel prices have plunged more than 60 percent since July 2022. The scale of the damage inflicted has sparked calls for Brussels to protect European companies from what the industry says are state-subsidized Chinese products.
Europe’s solar panel manufacturing capacity has collapsed by about half to 3 gigawatts since November as companies have failed, mothballed facilities, or shifted production abroad, the European Solar Manufacturing Council estimates.
The Salad Days of Solar Power are behind us
The sudden death of the solar boom is due to rising interest rates which take the fun out of getting a loan, but it’s also due to rising electricity costs, which increase the prices of everything, including solar panels themselves and the batteries they need to back them up.
But there’s an argument to be made that the grid itself has reached the limit. The Duck Curve has been quacking on grids in California and Australia for years. Ponder that in towns like Alice Springs the microgrid is in danger of falling over when a cloud rolls in, and only 1 in 4 homes there have solar panels. Indeed, in the sunny centre of Australia, the limit for solar power appears to be just 13% — meaning it’s hard to stabilize the grid when more than 13% of the annual supply is made from solar power.
When storms knocked over a high voltage line in South Australia the first thing the government did was to ask people to switch off their solar panels so they wouldn’t crash the grid.
Even on the big grids, there’s already such a glut of solar panels on homes, that the midday surge of “green” electrons is causing voltage surges which can damage other equipment. Solar “feed in” tariffs to homeowners are shrinking to nothing, or even going negative themselves. In Adelaide and Perth the government now insists people installing solar panels get smart meters so the grid managers can remotely switch off their panels. Worse, in Sydney solar home owners now have to pay to dump unwanted solar power on the grid at lunchtime.
Then there’s the mayhem of negative prices on national markets which is driving baseload providers off the grid and out of business. Large industrial generators are restructuring their businesses to accommodate the crazy pricing.
Last word: China already controls 80% of the market, would it really want to dump so many solar panels it drove the last 20% out of business, or was this just one huge Big-Government mistake?
Photo: Tadeáš Bednarz
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So how long before govts pay you to remove these crazy, toxic solar panels?
And they only provide power for about 15% of every day, week, month and year in Australia and about 10% or less in parts of Europe.
We need reliable base-load energy in Australia ASAP and we should stop installing toxic W & S now.
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Seems like the topography of Australia would make the continent a prime location for the success of solar and wind power.
If it doesn’t work there, where can it work?
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It doesn’t work down in the ‘Roaring 40’s’ so why would it work where the wind is more gentle.
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Because more is not better with wind power. Ideally you want Goldilocks wind; just right.
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Meanwhile, back in the Stupid Country, the Government wants to “invest” (= waste) billions of dollars in solar panel manufacturing.
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Now THAT’S a climate of crisis!
Thankfully we in the Shaky Isles simply import more Indonesian coal to keep our one remaining power station churning as (surprise!) hydro lakes are running low and windmills are barely turning and the sun is fairly feeble at this time of year.
Going round in circles is the new moving forward.
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I wonder why NZ imports coal from Indonesia when Australia is much closer?
Plus, as I understand it, most Indon coal is of low quality.
Australia doesn’t mind exporting coal, we are just not allowed to (or highly restricted from) using it ourselves. Exported CO2 doesn’t count towards the “climate crisis”.
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I wonder why we don’t use our coal – shedloads of the stuff, the best being exported offshore… oh wait, I get it: saving the snails and the planet and a shady deal or two behind closed doors.
Freezing is ‘zero’ after all.
That woman whose name we shall not mention is still afflicting these shores and its inhabitants. Away spot! Away with you!
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Or as Oliver Cromwell said:
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And when the English people, incapable of handling life without someone above to constantly remind them of their inferiority, invited Charles II to take the throne, Cromwell and his son were hanged, drawn and quartered with heads placed upon spikes on IIRC Tower Bridge. But they were lucky as they were already dead while those others still alive, who had signed the execution warrant for Charles I, had to enjoy one of the most grievously cruel executions known to man. Mind you, it was all over in an hour or so unlike crucifixion, breaking at the wheel, sawing and impalement. Man’s ingenuity for finding ways to hurt his own kind says far too much about him.
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When you’re hanged, drawn and quartered, you aren’t hung until you’re dead. More like half suffocated, so you get to feel every bit of the next parts.
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Though Charles’ father the King had his head cut off by Cromwell, so..kind of understandable.
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Price !!
Myself and an engineer colleague were once on contract reviewing the coal import requirements in NZ to compare with local production capacity.
As part of that, we were literally standing at the Indo coal import terminal counting the unloading cars as they were trundled off to various stockpiles. During that 2 day activity, the then NZ Prime Minister went on TV to declare that NZ was not importing coal – yet it was the NZ bureaucracy that had hired the two of us to make the comparison.
Of course it’s price. The volume required by NZ is so tiny, and the quality required so low, that most Aus miners don’t bother. Further, the South Island West Coast has no suitable harbour (flat bottom barges are used instead, with obvious strict limits on storm capabilities, with Greymouth “harbour” accessible only during high tides) and the East Coast has only one moderately useful harbour but import requirements are so low that building an unloading terminal there is not economic. A loading terminal for moderate shipping does exist there, as some NZ coals are of very high qualities.
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Could also be ash disposal.
Indo coal typically is extremely low ash similar to NZ coals (at least the stuff from Westport).
Indo coal is high in moisture, meaning you need very little space to deal with fly ash.
Like most exporting countries Aus makes a range from Newcastle Standard, down to low energy offerings destined for China and India. People proclaiming how “Aussie coal is tops!” don’t know much about thermal coal. You are buying net energy which suits your site specific needs.
Replacing a low ash thermal coal with the much drier but higher ash Australian coals might cause issues with fly ash disposal in the boiler and into ash ponds.
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Good for making concrete though
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If the quality is good enough and the landed cost is lower why not?
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Greg
But remember –
“Blessed are they that run round in little circles for they will be known as “Big Wheels”
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State subsidized Chinese panels. Incredible the lengths they will go to to avoid using the words “slave labour built”.
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In fact our govt wants to waste trillions of $ on toxic, unreliable W & S and destroy up to 28,000 klms of our environment to install the poles and wires to complete their lunacy.
And all for a guaranteed zero change for temperature and climate to add to our misery.See Dr Finkel’s statement under oath in the Senate.
Also see their ABC and Bloomberg for the cost of toxic W & S + batteries that I’ve linked to recently.
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‘The world now has the capacity to make 1,600 GW of solar panels annually, but demand has unexpectedly flat-lined — staying at barely 500GW. In a world awash with solar panels that no one needs, prices have fallen dramatically, but that hasn’t solved the glut which is so bad, people are using solar panels for fencing in Europe.’
Meanwhile, in the Antipodes …
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Solar panels are great in remote, off-the-grid, areas but encouraging millions of homeowners to install them on so-called low-interest loans is nothing short of stupidity. As we all know repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different answer is madness personified. In 20 years when these things have overstayed their use-by dates and insurance companies have found a way to obviate claims, the mountains of solar trash will be renamed to mask their presence. Governments will be forced to levy a dumping fee. Disposal companies will spring up with myriad bright ideas. It’ll be the next “gold rush”. Of course, all the politicians who promoted them will be long gone but the financial debt will linger for generations.
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Why wait? Truck the debris to communities near ocean shores and build tsunami escape towers, and to winter snow areas that could build the mountain higher to promote more tourism. Properly stabilized and shielded these could last until a future archaeologist discovers them.
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Chris Bowen is even more deluded than Joe Biden at discerning between truth and fantasy after Fortescue Group’s green hydrogen bombshell
Fortescue Group has dumped a mega-tanker of cold water on Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s green hydro dream as evidence continues to mount against the economically unviable energy source, writes Nick Cater. – SkyNews.com.au Contributor and Political Commentator
Last week, Chris Bowen told the National Press Club how brilliantly the great energy transition was progressing.
He claimed the plan to develop green hydrogen was progressing “at pace” while candidly admitting, “it’s not here yet”.
Later that afternoon, we learnt how far away the technology is.
Green hydrogen’s most enthusiastic corporate backer, Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue group, announced that it was scrapping its target of producing 15 million tonnes of green hydrogen a year by 2030.
The company announced the loss of 700 jobs as it refocused on its core mining business.
In a single press release, Forrest dumped a mega-tanker of cold water on Bowen’s plan to turn Australia into a renewable energy superpower by the decade’s end.
Fortescue remains committed to reaching its back-of-the-envelope target “eventually”.
However, the company did not give the slightest hint of when that might be, nor did it make any commitment that its green hydrogen production would happen in Australia.
Fortescue’s significant commitments to green hydrogen in the last 12 months have all been overseas.
Anthony Albanese can bang on all he likes about a future built in Australia, but the future of green hydrogen, if it has one, will be built in Arizona, Canada, Brazil, or somewhere else where clean energy is available at a vaguely affordable price.
Fortescue’s announcement nails the lid on the coffin of Labor’s Future Made in Australia plan.
Mr Bowen’s claim on Wednesday that Australia has an unsurpassed natural advantage in wind and solar power is an insult to our intelligence.
The availability of so-called renewable energy is constrained not by the wind and sun but by the availability of capital.
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Mr Bowen and Anthony Albanese’s green energy superpower dream is over – dead, buried, and cremated.
It is over for the same reason we won’t be getting the $275 reduction on our electricity bills they promised at the last election.
Renewable energy is hellishly expensive.
The incompetent minister who led us down this reckless and expensive path does not deserve to keep his job.
And it was easier to persuade President Joe Biden to step aside than it will be to shift Mr Bowen.
The Minister for Climate Change and Energy remains isolated from reality.
He is still living in a parallel universe and is no longer able to separate fact from fantasy.
Both of them were at one point in time incapable of absorbing the extent of their own shortcomings or recognising that they have lost the trust of their respective employers – the taxpayers of Australia and the US.
From the Comments
– Environment Minister Bowen sat on the green wall
Environment Minister Bowen had a great fall
All the renewable army and all the renewable men
Couldn’t put Environment Minister Bowen renewable again.
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Even our local globalist Strangelove knows how to use the madness of crowds to shift wealth without creating wealth.
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‘Twilight zone’: One thing energy row misses
There’s a big question being posed in Australian politics right now, but it ignores the easiest and only viable solution to the energy conundrum.
The Twilight Zone of Australian politics is posing a key question which has stumped the country for a decade; do you support renewables or nuclear for the energy transition?
This false binary ignores the only viable and easiest solution to the energy conundrum; which is to use more gas for power.
Gas power produces half the emissions of coal, and whether you ultimately support renewables or nuclear in the long run; gas is essential while either rolls out over the next 25 years.
Gas-fired power is the perfect support for renewables because gas turbines can be switched on and off quickly, and can provide dispatchable power when the sun goes down and the wind doesn’t blow.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) knows this and recently declared that the renewables transition will require the equivalent of 25 “gas peaker” power stations:
Gas-fired power stations are also cheap to build, in fact, we could build all 26 gas peakers for the cost of one nuclear power plant.
Australia’s east coast has oodles of cheap gas to fuel them, and, existing coal-fired power stations can quickly be converted to gas-fired even more cheaply; without the need for new infrastructure beyond gas access.
There are still 15 of these coal plants in the National Electricity Market.
The US has converted more than 100 coal power stations to gas since 2009, this is how it has surpassed Australian decarbonisation despite even more fractious politics than our own.
So, what’s the problem?
Given these huge advantages, why is gas being ignored in the debate?
During and after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, east coast gas reserves were sold off to foreign oil companies.
Mostly in Queensland, the reserves are now 85 per cent owned by an LNG export cartel that operates out of Curtis Island.
This means that although the east coast has stacks of cheap gas, it mostly goes offshore, 72 per cent to China, which, unbelievably, often resells it to other countries:
The gas export cartel has deliberately driven up the price of locally supplied gas such that it is 500 per cent higher priced than historical averages and is unviable as a power-production fuel.
Indeed, the artificial shortages engineered by the cartel are so acute that there is often no gas at all and the NEM reverts to load shedding (blackouts) instead.
So, nobody wants to build a gas peaker or convert a coal power station to gas because there is no security of supply of the fuel.
Why doesn’t Canberra act?
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“Why doesn’t Canberra act?”
Because Canberra has electricity and gas… its very simple, and politicians are very simple people.
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Old Ozzie,
Just remember that gas power is clearly far more expensive than coal power, we have plenty of thermal coal, especially brown coal, and for those people obsessed with emissions, when you burn gas, it emits twice as much water vapour as it does CO2 and water vapour is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 could ever be. Ban water vapour emissions now!
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“do you support renewables or nuclear for the energy transition?
This false binary ignores the only viable and easiest solution to the energy conundrum; which is to use more gas for power.”
Only gas? You can’t seriously leave coal out of the equation. You actually need both coal and gas in the transition to nuclear power, but it would be best to use coal as much as possible for the transition, to make the gas last longer. The transition will take many decades, and we have enough coal for centuries.
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They DID act – THAT is the problem . Without political interference retail electricity would still be $0.0625 per KWh and be in plentiful supply . Not the current $0.40 !
And no farmland would have been destroyed .
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Fair go Oz. We arent the only stupid ones.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/california-launch-hydrogen-hub-expand-zero-emission-technology
Another lefty fantasy fest
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Again here’s the OECD and NON OECD co2 emissions data you can check for yourselves.
Compare 1990 OECD countries’ annual co2 emissions then to 2022 and note a slight drop.
Yet since 1990 the NON OECD co2 emissions are over 14 billion tons per year higher in 2022.
Or 10.16 billion tons in 1990 and 24.3 billion tons in 2022.
Of course that’s if you’re worried about extra co2 emissions.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=Non-OECD+%28GCP%29~OECD+%28GCP%29
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Too much solar power – So nuclear a no go!
So where does the power come from on windless nights?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCL1EJrsaLs
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Germany has more than enough CAPACITY of dollar panels AND wind turbines for each to supply the average demand. They only get 52% of ‘renewables’ electricity, and rely on coal-fired and imports from other countries e.g. nuclear from France (& Czechia), hydro from Norway & Sweden, and coal-fired from Poland via the network of interconnectors.
Australia has no interconnectors.
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Graeme,
The Germans shut down their nuclear and get the gold star for that idiocy . For a country that has some of the best engineers their energy policy is nonsense . They put the Vandals in charge again….
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“So where does the power come from on windless nights?”
Yes co2 Lover and what happens on very cloudy days/ weeks and no wind?
And clueless toxic batteries only last for an hour or so? And then how do you quickly charge the batteries again?
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Our off grid neighbour seems to have discovered the need for a generator, as the reverberation through our place is telling us. That generator must be several hundred metres away but is still annoying. We have had a few days lately with no sun and no wind to speak of; thank goodness the sun is out today!
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Are you going to the “information” day for the proposed new wind power plants in the Strathbogies and Terip Terip?
I have heard that its in the Alexandra High School hall starting at 10.00 am this Saturday.
I hope to be there to listen to the “experts” telling us how it will be sooooo different to the Seymour array that struggles to reach 35% efficiency.
What does government do when a wind array “fails” to power X number of houses, why build more wind towers on exactly the same line of mountain.
They seem incapable of understanding that if the wind don’t blow, it simply doesn’t matter how many wind turbines you have.
Are well, another Bundy may make my night easier!
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The western world grovelled and kowtowed to the lobbying by the IPCC, UNFCCC and UN in general despite these organizations having no expertise in large scale electrical engineering.
Now they are paying the price.
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Just a reminder at the educational status of politicians who are committing Australia, The Stupid Country, to billions of dollars worth of wasted expenditure on solar plantations and panel manufacture.
Here our PM thinks solar panels work at night, and can charge your EV for free overnight:
https://youtu.be/vyS9uqRLbB8
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Doesn’t Albanese have a bunch of highly overpaid “advisors” That are meant to tell him what’s going on the world?
In proper countries they are abandoning panel manufacturing, in the Stupid Country it’s “full steam ahead”.
Meanwhile, Australia has mostly abandoned real manufacturing due to expensive “green” energy (plus feral unions and over-regulation).
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Energy Minister Chris Bowen won’t admit to that: he’s keen to make thousand windfarm salad dressing to toss into the whole mess.
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Simpleton Chrissy Bowen is surrounded by sycophants who are too terrified to tell him how stupid he is.
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Right now in Australia, Chris Bowen is the most annoying politician !
Just being nice . .
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It’s quite amazing if you go on social media (eg. X) or on some blogs. If the subject is renewable energy (RE) and in particular solar, some RE sycophant will eventually comment that ” the sun shines more energy onto earth in one day that we use (as a civilisation) in one year”. Or some variation of that green bubble babble. They never think that although that little factoid is somewhat true, all that solar energy is no good if you cant harvest it. Then someone will say wind and solar are FREE. Yes, it’s free but it costs a shipload of money to actually harvest it and then store it. Can we store it? Well theoretically if you have enough batteries, which we know is not possible because of the limitations of mineral extraction and processing. Plus there’s the exorbitant cost of storying that excess solar/wind electricity. Then the comment- “we can store rainfall or excess grain from harvest so why not electricity?” A similar type comment was made by one of the federal Labor or green politicians (probably Bowen) a few weeks ago. Well, for starters, storing water and grain is pretty simple, whereas electricity storage is horribly complex and expensive. For water or grain, dig a big hole or bunker and store the stuff, it’s dead easy and relatively cheap. It’s like Groundhog Day, the same comments get regurgitated all the time.
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Ross, i couldn’t agree more.
Here one from an article in https://www.watoday.com.au/business/the-economy/the-dirty-secret-of-australia-s-green-energy-transition-20240704-p5jr9m.html with the 1st comment :
“99% of tradies work all day on a battery power. The secret: more storage than required.
Don’t tell me a nation cannot solve the renewable storage problem when tens of thousands of tradies solve it everyday.”
So, their logic is that Tradies use battery power and have sufficient “capacity”, therefore as a nation we should be able to do the same!
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Yep, another idiotic comment. Which also conveniently forgets that when the tradie’s battery needs recharging he hooks it up to the predominantly coal fired grid to recharge in probably 99% of cases. Which runs 24/7.
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Tradies recharge their batteries overnight, ready for the next day’s work. Despite Albozo’s comment re – charging with solar overnight, it is definitely coal doing the heavy lifting.
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It looks like another form of “penis envy” – except they haven’t worked out that the tradies are happy with little ones
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A shipload has already been stored for us in the form of FF.
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This is the market catching up with reality . Contrary to what the MSM is pushing solar and wind aren’t viable going forward . With the demise of free money (debt and deficits) reality is reasserting itself . Slowly , then all of a sudden.
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The naivety of those classes of human beings who believe they could do much, much better than others had before them if only given the chance to do so. The difference this time around is they have been given as many chances as they like to do so. So much for this century’s brand of human intelligence and we are still less than a quarter way through.
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While the rest of the world is waking up , we are still heading towards the new dark ages !
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The other thing that will happen is that the solar and wind operations will fail commercially or reach end of asset life but no one will clear up the toxic mess.
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“reach end of asset life”
If – as is likely, as you say – nobody clears up the mess, there it will stay as a long-standing, decaying reminder of the time the arts graduates decided they knew far more about physics, power engineering, maritime corrosion and the rest than did folk who had worked in one or more of those areas since school.
An awful reminder to the pollies … that they won’t notice.
But ordinary voters and consumers might.
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