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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."
I have a harsh light for their ability to read a PO. We ordered a thousand amorphous panels for a toy and we asked for 4mA in full sunlight except they shipped .4mA panels. They added a decimal to our spec and that was it. And it cost just enough so it's not worth pursuing further, just start over.
Mostly random stuff.
Well, that's the problem with a race to the bottom: sooner or later you do, in fact, hit bottom. This reminds me of how things played out in the desktop PC market a decade ago: really cheap components caused a lot of problems for a lot of name-brand manufacturers. Bad electrolytic caps on the motherboard were particularly pernicious.
The good news is that, eventually, this will probably get sorted out. Producers and installers with brands and reputations (not to mention business contracts) to defend will eventually get fed up with dealing with shitty suppliers, who will either clean up their act, go out of business, or retreat to the purgatory of "known to be poor quality", where there's still plenty of business to be had (see again the desktop PC market), but not much money to be made.
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.