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Casting a Harsh Light On Chinese Solar Panels
New submitter Eugriped3z writes with an article in the New York Times that "indicates that manufacturing defect rates for solar panels manufactured in China vary widely, anywhere from 5-22%. Secrecy in the terms of settlements negotiated by attorneys representing multi-million dollar installations perpetuate the problem by masking the identity of unscrupulous or incompetent actors. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that unit labor costs in Mexico are now lower than in China."
From TFA
And when defects are discovered, confidentiality agreements often keep the manufacturer’s identity secret, making accountability in the industry all the more difficult.
Kind of irrelevant. When you buy something, the person who sold it to you is the responsible party. If they want to keep their supplier a secret (more on that later) that's up to them but the seller is the responsible party. If they don't know who they are buying from, then they are fools and deserve whatever problems they get.
The curious bit is that I don't really see how the players in the supply chain could be kept a secret from an interested large purchaser. I run a small manufacturing company. One of the parts we make goes into a General Motors vehicle and we are a Tier 4 supplier meaning we sell to a company who sells to another company who sells to another company who sells to GM. If GM wanted to find out who made that part, I absolutely guarantee you that they could find out even if we had a confidentiality agreement in place with our customer. If the solar panel industry is unable or unwilling to do this then it means they have insufficient control of their supply chain which is a BIG problem. It means they don't really know what they are buying or how it is made.
So you paid before you got a sample? or the first delivery?
Not unusual to have to pay in advance for a product made in China unless you are a big player. I wouldn't ship to a company in another country without cash up front no matter what the quantity was.
That seems fraught with peril.
That would be correct. Doing business in China is a genuinely risky proposition. I used to do work in global sourcing and have spent a lot of time trying to buy parts in Mexico, India and China. You do so at your own risk.
Mountain pass mine, in California.
The Chinese were allowed to dump these on the market and kill off our mines at one point. I would hope we would not be stupid enough to let them do that again. Sadly I know we would.
Then there is the issue of Quality Fade. The first shipment is good, after that, it just gets crappy.
Say it isn't so!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Well, my own experience is quite a bit different with *quality* panels. I've got some I bought new 30+ years ago that are still 70% of the original spec in output.
Guess who made them? BP - that's right, the oil company that shut down solar production due to lack of profit just before they oiled up the Gulf. I paid pretty high for them back in the late '70s/early '80s, but there you have it - they've also lived through hail, wind, you name it - along with a thermal cycle per day, which is often the real killer in the cheap stuff - they don't do the "magic" tempco matching of all the parts. While I also like my new Schott panels - they are going to much thinner glass to save money - and probably won't be as robust, but time will tell.
A roof IS a rough place to put a solar panel (forget an un-hermitic cell) indeed.
You can see a picture of my system, which has allowed me to be off grid since '79 - and which now charges my Volt, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4IM2VjkRXM, and more on my channel generally, as well as here: http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=563 (my forums) which details the latest upgrade, in which it was worth paying rent on a crane and labor to help remount 30+ year old panels, because they still work fine.
Avoid all amorphous and thin film panels - they all fail due to temco/microcrack issues very young. The "new tech" to make the panels cheap is pure junk - and the silicon wasn't the major cost - the glass, the hermetic sealing, and the tempco matched parts were always the main cost...there's quite a bit of hype in the whole alt/energy biz - too many starry-eyed people with money to be fleeced to avoid that.