• Environmental

  A shortage of glass is making solar panels more expensive

  Posted by Unknown Member on 16 November 2020 at 4:06 pm

  The world’s biggest solar power company says a shortage of glass is raising costs and delaying production of new panels, throwing a wrench into China’s plans to accelerate its shift to clean power.

  Prices for glass that coats photovoltaic panels have risen 71% since July, and manufacturers are struggling to produce it fast enough to keep more than a week’s worth of sales in inventory, according to Daiwa Capital Markets. The shortage comes as the solar industry turns toward bifacial panels, which increase both power output and glass requirements.

  Solar panel producers like Longi Green Energy Technology Co. have asked the government in China, home to most solar manufacturing, to address the situation by approving new factories. Otherwise price hikes risk making solar power too expensive and halting the industry’s momentum.

  “If solar power generators see solar projects as uneconomical, they will delay investing in new projects and that will drag down solar demand,” said Charles Jiang, general manager of the supply chain management center at Longi, the world’s biggest solar company by market capitalization. “Solar power plant profits will drop below acceptable levels without government subsidies if glass makers go on to push up the costs.”

  In 2018, with the energy intensive and polluting glass industry facing over-capacity issues, China’s government forbade companies from adding new production capacity. Longi and five other major solar companies on Tuesday met with government officials and appealed for them to remove the restrictions, at least for solar glass.

  Suddenly solar power is seen as not the great green energy efficient product for which we have been lead to believe for so many years.

  Unknown Member replied 3 years, 6 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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