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Bosch Finds Solar Business Unprofitable, Exits
New submitter rwise2112 writes "German engineering company Bosch said Friday that it is abandoning its solar energy business, because there is no way to make it economically viable.'We have considered the latest technological advances, cost-reduction potential and strategic alignment, and there have also been talks with potential partners,' Bosch CEO Volkmar Denner said. 'However, none of these possibilities resulted in a solution for the solar energy division that would be economically viable over the long term.'"
But I'm also aware without government subsidies, it's not economically viable. On the large scale.
That said, I love having a solar panel on my pack when I'm out hiking. It is a nice option when you're somewhere without access to the grid.
They probably mean that they cannot make enough money on it. Economically viable means that your situation (literally your household) improves. Most probably they are economically far more viable than cheap polluting alternatives.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
The reason it is unprofitable is because China is flooding the market with panels that cost less than the production cost. If China was punished for its behavior, these companies would be able to compete and stay in business.
"European makers of solar energy have accused low cost Asian competitors, especially manufacturers from China, of creating the trouble for their western peers, partly by flooding the market with products at prices far below production costs."
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
I have solar and an electric car. It is an amazing combination. A 10Kw grid-tie system is now about $3/watt installed, and that drops to $2/watt after a 30% tax credit. If most new houses built included a solar panel on the roof, I could see the US becoming energy independent in a decade.
Seriously, do I have to think of everything?
Look you can produce a product, put it on the market, blah blah blah. Fuck that. Do what lockheed does.
1. Open a number of plants within the US, get the politicians to give speeches about how wonderful each plant will be locally. Make sure to choose towns that would be as deastated as possible by any future plant closure.
2. Lobby congress directly to buy the solar panels as a national security issue, and ignoring any irresponsible departments who claim they are not cost effective or they don't need them.
3. If #2 doesn't work right away, threaten to close individual plants, rinse and repeat until congress orders enough to ensure your profits. Be sure to tell your employees that the plant might be closing because of the uncertainty around government orders. Try to get the whole town involved.
4. Once they are buying them, get them to throw a few orders into the foriegn aid bucket. (Isreal needs solar power to keep it safe from Iran!)
5. Profit.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
electric cars only suck because our battery technology sucks. But there's nothing in the laws of physics that says you can't make batteries that don't suck.
(triple negative... yikes)
Somebody's gonna come up with a new battery that exploits quantum effects and raises energy density by 10x. The world will be theirs.
Hell, just yesterday I saw a Slashdot article about Lockeed Martin coming up with a new nano-material that decreases water desalinization energy requirement by 100x. We're just scratching the surface when it comes to nano-sized materials and quantum effects (which are related to nano stuff cuz they only happen at very small scales)
Petroleum isn't economically viable over the long term either.
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No, it's called productivity.
The manufacturing costs for manufacturing a generally similar in both Europe and China, balancing German automation + power costs vs. Chinese labor costs.
What isn't the same is the after-cost of adhering to German vs. Chinese environmental regulations.
Most industrialized nations could easily save their local manufacturing bases by imposing requirements on products being manufactured in accordance to local environmental standards in the locations they are sold. It's optional whether they would want to impose environmental tarrifs and take the product anyway, despite "dirty" manufacturing, or simply block entry of the product into the country.
For China, depending on how far up the supply chain you wanted to push the requirement, you could take it to the point of requireing scrubbers on the stacks of the coal-fired power plants that powered the manufacturing facilities.
It's ironic that environmentalism has succeeded only in moving the mess out of view (to China), rather than keeping the mess from being injected into the global ecosystem anyway. But at least health care costs tend to go down when you have no local manufacturing going on, due to a reduction in pollutants.
1945.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Blasphemy.
Inventing something implies he did not know it already.
The Omnipotent Lord our Jobs willed the internet into existence when humanity was ready to ascend one step closer to true enlightenment.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!