China solar module prices keep diving

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/06/23/china-solar-module-prices-keep-diving/

by flipbrad • 3 years ago

174 206 3 years ago

pv-magazine.com

mensetmanusman• 3 years ago

China subsidized the worlds PV. That's great.

Practically this was possible by pegging the currency which lowers the purchasing power of all their citizens.

mullingitover• 3 years ago

Whatever they're doing, it doesn't seem to be worse than the US. Chinese PPP has been growing faster[1].

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locat...

arcticfox• 3 years ago

That could be simply a function of having a lot of room for growth. I personally think their growth is not sustainable once they achieve ~US levels of PPP per capita.

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?locat...

alephnerd6• 3 years ago

I'd be a bit cautious about using GDP PPP in isolation.

It's a good metric for a rough comparison/transformation, but has relatively weak prediction power. That said, the same holds for any economic metric used in isolation (eg. HDI, GDP, GDP Per Capita, GDP Growth Rate, GDP PPP Per Capita, Debt Rate, Median Income, etc.)

All metrics need to used together to gain a holistic view on economic development. It's the equivalent of driving and only concentrating on the odometer at the expense of the fuel gauge, speedometer, and tachometer.

seanmcdirmid4• 3 years ago

China’s PPP is weird. It isn’t apples to apples, it is Chinese living standard to American living standard. Many things in China are actually more expensive than the USA, what is cheaper is generally related to food and services, otherwise you just go with cheaper alternatives in China instead, and they are cheaper for a reason. Housing is a good example: you aren’t going to fund the same standard f housing in China for cheaper than the USA, but you can find cheaper housing (I.e. not as nice as you would rent in the states). Cars are another good example: they have cheap cars, but if you want to buy say a Camry in china, you’ll pay more than you would in the USA (and we aren’t even talking imports, they are made in Chinese factories at a lesser quality standard than the USA or Japan).

SoftTalker• 3 years ago

The WalMart market dominance model. Undercut everyone else until you eliminate the competition, then raise the price.

toolz2• 3 years ago

At least in the US market there isn't a single category of a thing in any walmart that you can only buy exclusively at walmart. If this was their strategy they would still be price cutting.

refurb• 3 years ago

Very true. It's absolutely terrible as a consumer getting lower prices than anywhere else. Won't the DOJ stop them!!!

marianatom5• 3 years ago

Meanwhile, China's solar industry is in rapid decline, dropping 40% in market cap y/y, due to overcapacity, falling price margins, bans on goods from China's Xinjiang region, and increased non-Chinese solar growth - US's solar industry seem to be on the rise. China's solar industry should follow similar trends as its electronics industry, with massive pullout of factories to other countries, and eventually only mostly servicing China's internal markets.

Plunging Solar Stocks Fly in Face of Booming Panel Demand https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-20/solar-sto...

U.S. solar installations to fall 23% this year due to China goods ban -report https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-solar-installatio...

RobinL• 3 years ago

Not sure if it's a comparable metric, but it seems to largely follow the long term time series here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices

dopa42365• 3 years ago

https://ourworldindata.org/learning-curve

As the cumulative installed capacity increased, the price of solar declined exponentially. Solar technology is a prime example. For more than four decades, the price of solar panels declined by 20% with each doubling of global cumulative capacity.

onlyrealcuzzo3• 3 years ago

Is that adjusted for inflation?

tryptophan• 3 years ago

Hmm interesting, suggests that solar panel prices should drop to like 8c/W by 2030. At that point they are pretty much free because the ROI will be so high.

photochemsyn• 3 years ago

Some of this is related to China's apparent mastery of monocrystalline silicon PV technology. The article and the graph don't distinguish panels by mono vs poly but for non-thin-tech panels, monocrystalline is preferable. See (2018):

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/04/14/the-weekend-read-chin...

"When potential expansions from other mono ingot and wafer makers are factored in, this points to a tectonic shift in the supply of monocrystalline silicon which threatens to reconfigure the entire upstream solar landscape and potentially push monocrystalline silicon solar into a dominant market position in much shorter timeframe than previously anticipated."

causality0• 3 years ago

Rather sad to me that none of these price drops seem to trickle down. Hurray for more solar farms but it would nice if the price of a backpack solar panel was a dollar less than it was a decade ago.

nico_h• 3 years ago

It practically did thanks to inflation.

ZoomerCretin• 3 years ago

Wages don't rise with inflation. The price of everything rising 20% doesn't affect the price of things that don't.

eternityforest2• 3 years ago

I don't remember what the price was a decade ago, but something like a 60W folding panel these days often goes on sale for really cheap, like, under $2 a watt.

The backpacks with built in panels are still expensive because I'm guessing it's hard to find customers who want to be in direct sunlight long enough to get significant charge, while carrying a backpack.

dntrkv• 3 years ago

There are 100W folding panels for under $100. As you get into the range of smaller panels, you see less savings due to overhead, demand, etc.

aitchnyu• 3 years ago

I have almost 5kw of panels and a 5kw inverter. If solar panels get cheaper than dirt, will future 5kw inverters allow 10 kw of panels, so that the power vs time graph is a wide "plateau" instead of a thin "hill"?

andruby• 3 years ago

5kW inverters already support 10kW(peak) solar panels. It’s mostly a voltage compatibility, not a max output.

philipkglass2• 3 years ago

The ratio of DC panel wattage to AC inverter wattage is called the inverter loading ratio, and it has been creeping up over time in utility scale solar farms. The reasoning is indeed to give more of a plateau shape to AC output (which is limited by transmission line capacity) and to perform more steadily under hazy or partly cloudy conditions. In theory, this ratio could go up a lot if panel prices continue to decline faster than inverter prices.

In practice, inverters probably also need partial redesign for a high loading ratio. Higher ILRs in large solar farms has appeared to contribute to faster inverter failures in recent years.

eternityforest2• 3 years ago

I wonder what kind of onsite loads they could have to use extra capacity? Is there any high power industrial process doesn't require too much space, setup cost, or transport infrastructure for materials in and out, and can run when there's sun available?

Maybe carbon capture, if that's a thing yet?

yazaddaruvala6• 3 years ago

In practice, inverters probably also need partial redesign

I'd also love for appliances to entirely adopt DC.

- Homes should run on batteries.

- Batteries should be trickle charged from the grid with a cheap rectifier.

marcosdumay2• 3 years ago

Does your inverter not allow that today?

They expect a number of panels to be connected in series, but you can have as many of those batches in parallel as you want.

dymk2• 3 years ago

String systems yes, but you can't do that with microinverter based systems

PossiblyKyle2• 3 years ago

You can essentially already do that. I live in a place basking with sun most of the year, and have 22k of panels with a 15kw inverter (max allowed before being considered commercial). My production is a wide hill with a considerable plateau, thanks to the amount of panels (as an example, produced 140kwh yesterday). It is clearly not economically viable for most regions, but for us it luckily is

kurthr2• 3 years ago

Even more important, if you're on batteries as opposed to grid-tied, your battery costs can go down significantly. Since the worst days of the year tend to be winter and overcast, if you can install enough capacity to still generate a significant fraction of your needs on those days (eg at 10% of summer peak) the size of the required batteries can be much smaller.

It doesn't work so well in the north east, but if weather is only bad for a few days, you might need much less backup or generator power. Batteries and generator power tends to be much less than adding excess solar.

tbihl• 3 years ago

I imagine you sell a lot of electricity back. I can't imagine using anywhere near that much power.

jaredhallen• 3 years ago

If you're not putting it into the grid you can do whatever ratio. Have 20KW (or whatever) of panels, a suitably sized charge controller, a bunch of batteries, and an inverter sized for whatever max AC current draw you need. Or if you can run everything you need DC, skip the inverter altogether.

hbarka• 3 years ago

Yes. You’ll get inverter clipping, but the area under the curve in a clipped production is still better than a “thin hill” production. https://unboundsolar.com/blog/oversizing-pv-arrays

Jedd• 3 years ago

There's no conditional on solar panel pricing -- you can do this now.

I have 12kW of panels, and a 10kW inverter. I get a nice 10kW flat-line for a few hours each day through summer, and a better-than-it-would-otherwise-be return through winter (though never reaching max).

chris2222• 3 years ago

Yes, this is called clipping and it’s not a bad thing. Most areas don’t have perfect peak sunlight for very long at all.

the_third_wave• 3 years ago

will future 5kw inverters allow 10 kw of panels, so that the power vs time graph is a wide "plateau" instead of a thin "hill"?

Inverters already allow a substantial amount of undersizing, e.g. I'm using a 10 kW Fronius inverter with 14.5 kW of panels installed. This does lead to the plateau you are looking after so if that is something you want, go for it In my case the 10 kW inverter just happened to be the biggest one available in this series (GEN24 Symo, a 3-phase hybrid inverter using high-voltage batteries (which I have yet to install, waiting for prices to come down and my 5 year sell-back contract to expire)). I would have been fine with a "thin hill" instead of the wide plateau we get now since that hill would stand on top of the plateau, maximising production.

yesbut3• 3 years ago

And all of this cheap PV being produced required burning coal. We've basically outsourced this production, reduced our own coal burning, and then yell at China for increasing its carbon output.

pfdietz5• 3 years ago

Producing PV does not require burning coal.

Tade0• 3 years ago

It does require energy though, and China gets a lot of it from coal.

That being said panels still produce multiples of their embedded energy throughout their lifetime, so it's still worth it.

It's their construction industry which is incredibly wasteful and isn't a result of outsourcing.

yesbut3• 3 years ago

All of the current mass produced, cheap PV is made using coal smelting. Someday in the future that might not be true, but it is true today.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335083312_Why_do_we...

pengaru• 3 years ago

The disaster of the last century is not securing a renewable energy future while squandering the convenient non-renewable energy of fossil fuels on short-term interests.

If you want to shake your fists about fossil fuel emissions this is by far not the appropriate direction to aim them IMO.

testhest• 3 years ago

Once the Chinese run out of money or they have killed off the last competition the price will increase again.

andy_ppp2• 3 years ago

Surely we’ll just invest in factories in the Philippines or Mexico and build these things (even more) cheaply there instead? Capitalism is good at finding ways to make a return and if solar panels become profitable money will make it happen. It could turn out to be good if there was a load of unused solar capacity in China rather than the coal they are burning today…

pfdietz5• 3 years ago

At some point the modules get so cheap that transportation costs will become important. This is why we don't ship window glass great distances.

xen2xen1• 3 years ago

Or India. See the announcements today.

marianatom5• 3 years ago

China's PPP should reduce in half this year. It has seen massive layoffs from every industry (average 22% decline in revenue across all industries). It has seen 50% reduction in wages, even in stable positions like government offices. It has seen unpaid wages for anywhere from a few months up to a year!!

This is reinforced by 50% in price cuts in real estate listings in tier 1 cities, 10X increase in real estate inventory this year, and 90% physical retail decline

China’s Latest Source of Unrest: Unpaid ‘Zero Covid’ Workers https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/world/asia/china-covid-pr...

China's Industrial profits in the January-March period declined 21.4% from a year earlier https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-27/china-s-i...

alephnerd6• 3 years ago

Huh? Even the most bearish projections about Chinese economic growth are at about 3% per year. For PPP to actually halve you'd have to actually see a recession comparable to the Great Depression, the Peso Crisis in the 90s, or the 2015 EU+US sanctions in Russia.

marianatom5• 3 years ago

China IS in a Great Depression. The government is making the numbers seem a little bit better, but with 21% official youth unemployment rate - definitely higher since netizens have found that only 20% of this year's graduate has secured jobs, and 50% - 70% reduction in real estate listing prices, when real estate is 30% of China's economy and how local governments mostly gets funded, we will see retroactively that China entered its Great Depression in 2022.

dang2• 3 years ago

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36453518 and stop posting like this. We don't want flamewars, especially not fueled by pre-existing agendas.

(and no, we're not secret communists or whatever - we're just trying to have an internet forum that doesn't suck in predictable ways)

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36451477.

secondcoming• 3 years ago

My biggest use of electricity is my laptop and monitor.

Any ideas on a portable solar panel that could power those during the summer? Portable because I rent and can’t fix anything down, it doesn’t have to fit in a backpack or anything like that.

syntaxing2• 3 years ago

That’s…really surprising? A ceiling fan uses about 75W a hour. A MacBook Pro has a 100 Wh battery and last about 4 hours so 25W per hour. Your laptop and monitor should be lower than any other appliance.

That being said, there’s a lot of options nowadays which is exciting! For instance, you could have a 200W port panel and a 1kWh battery system from eco flow that should run both with room to spare. Anker has a new system meant for patios but it’s only for Europe.

NotYourLawyer2• 3 years ago

75W a hour

Just 75W.

nkingsy• 3 years ago

I run my MacBook Pro off of the usbc pd port on my cheap ($130, 300wh) lifepo4 battery box. I got 2, plug one directly into a 100w solar panel, other powers the computer and monitor. Swap daily.

If you want to run a line into your house you can get by with one, or just get a panel with a usbc pd output.

yjftsjthsd-h• 3 years ago

Seems like the easy solution is one of those solar systems marketed as being for camping, right? Not sure it's economical, but easy.

Personally I'm interested in a DIY mod to add solar panels directly to the back of a laptop screen. It probably wouldn't be able to actually charge unless the machine is in sleep mode (which also would have the lid closed which would help), but it would extend the battery - if the machine averages 10W and the panel gives 1W, that's an extra 10% runtime for free, and better if it sleeps in the middle (which works, because I'm unlikely to use a laptop continuously for 10 hours).

jopsen• 3 years ago

Not sure it's economical,

Or environmentally sustainable?

A solar panel has life-span of 25-30 years, will you be utilizing that? or are you just creating more waste?

If you wanted to protect the environment, it's probably better to find a wind-farm project or solar farm project to invest in.

It's really easy to think that adding solar panels everywhere is a good idea; but you might just be making e-waste.

Symbiote• 3 years ago

Your fridge is probably using more power, unless it's a fairly new, highest-quality European market model.

(The range at the local big appliance retailer is about 35W for the cheapest models to 10W for the most expensive.)

PaulKeeble• 3 years ago

Ecoflow and others do battery and invertors with solar connectors for such a system. Much of their range allows up to 800W of solar panels and all in would be about $1500 total with 2 panels and that gives you 2KWh or so of battery storage. Your typical usage for a high end monitor is maybe 130W and laptops vary but almost certainly below 100W typically.

rcarr• 3 years ago

Ditch the monitor and get some AR glasses like Viture or Xreal

thinkcontext• 3 years ago

Portable panels are almost never used in a way such that the carbon emissions it took to make them are offset. Things like how many hours they are used, poor exposure and curtailment from the use of batteries all slash the useful electricity they produce.

For almost all people they are only appropriate when you are off-grid.

culopatin2• 3 years ago

You don’t have a fridge or a water heater or a stove or a fan?

invalidator• 3 years ago

How comfortable are you with DIY electrics? Can you lay out a panel somewhere in the sun? Do you want it to run at night? Do you want it to automatically switch to grid power if needed?

noveltyaccount• 3 years ago

Something like this https://youtu.be/UnTJScmSLYs Eco flow can charge from solar, then charge a few appliances. I think Anker just released a similar product.

Animats• 3 years ago

Are those numbers inflation-adjusted? That big downward spike coincides with the US inflation spike.

kurthr2• 3 years ago

The Yuan has roughly been pegged to the dollar @ ~7Y/$ for the last few years, but it rose (falling ratio) during the pandemic and it has been falling a lot (rising ratio) recently.

https://www.macrotrends.net/2575/us-dollar-yuan-exchange-rat...

China PPI is in Yuan, but sales prices of panels are mostly in Dollars.

seanmcdirmid4• 3 years ago

It was under 7 for a really long time. Seeing it above 7 again actually feels weird to me, like we are back in 2007 or so.

megaman8212• 3 years ago

I am trying to figure when solar panels will have a lower LCOE than just a steam turbine alone. At that point even absolutely free fusion would have a hard time competing with solar for half the day.

rgmerk• 3 years ago

I think we’re pretty close to that point already.

abeppu• 3 years ago

I mean, all the land that will eventually be used for solar has some cost.

irrational2• 3 years ago

This past spring break we drove through a lot of the back country of Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. There is an unbelievable amount of flat desert land that would be perfect for solar. We drove at highway speeds for hours without seeing anyone or anything else.

killingtime742• 3 years ago

Many countries have otherwise uninhabitable land. You can always float them as well. Farmers are also able to dual use land for generation and growing

foota• 3 years ago

Plus batteries plus transmission?

megaman8212• 3 years ago

I was just musing about the economics. Ultra-cheap solar drives steam turbine based competitors to have only about 50% utilization. I am not sure what that will do to the overall market.

earthling8118• 3 years ago

I don't see this being an issue. The reason I consider fusion important is so that we can have a total production that is several orders of magnitude greater than the current needs. Also for space when too far away from the sun.

bluSCALE42• 3 years ago

I keep seeing articles like this but install prices don't go down at all. Does news like this only apply to people building PV farms?

drcross• 3 years ago

Panel cost is probably 10-20% of a total install cost. What you're paying for is labour, inverter, cabling and metal mounting equipment. Mostly labour. If you're able to self install you can shave years off ROI.

bluSCALE42• 3 years ago

Yeah, I was looking into this. Look like I can get most of the equipment for a 18kW system for roughly 15k.

zbrozek• 3 years ago

DIY install is great. It's really not hard and saves a huge amount of money.

irrational2• 3 years ago

Where can you purchase everything wholesale?

bilsbie• 3 years ago

Why can’t we make those things cheaper?

Joeri• 3 years ago

With inflation install costs staying flat is actually a price decrease.

wrycoder2• 3 years ago

The article talks about modules at $0.17/watt, or $17 per 100 watts. The DIY prices for modules I see are around $1 per watt, and have been for a long time.

Where do you get these things?

killingtime742• 3 years ago

Wholesale?

newyankee• 3 years ago

Probably wholesale vs retail ?

Drunk_Engineer• 3 years ago

Craigslist

cmrdporcupine2• 3 years ago

So frustrating that pro-installed solar at the consumer level around here does not seem to have dropped. If anything it's gone way up.

sroussey• 3 years ago

Labor costs dominate.

sgerenser2• 3 years ago

Just got a quote last week (US east coast, mid-atlantic region) for $2.07/W DC with a 1.26 DC/AC ratio (9.6KW panels, 7.6KW string inverter). After 30% tax credit that’s $1.45/W, which might finally push me over the edge to install. My previous quote last year was about $2.36/W and in 2017 was about $2.85/W. So installed prices are definitely going down, at least in some parts of the country.

LUmBULtERA• 3 years ago

Who was this? Do they service Northern Virginia? Thanks!

cmrdporcupine2• 3 years ago

I haven't gotten an official quote in a while, I should do that. But I'm in Canada (Ontario) so my situation will be quite different.

I have a 50x100 shop with a metal roof I'd like to cover at least one half of, someday.

So many other priorities here though :-(

n40487171• 3 years ago

Regulatory capture by electricians

kinnth• 3 years ago

As a homeowner in the UK (or EU) how can I benefit from these cheap prices? What steps can I take to even just buy and hold the stock?

egberts1• 3 years ago

Westinghouse (AC) must be rolling in their grave.

spokeonawheel• 3 years ago

where does one go to purchase said diving solar modules?

tibbydudeza• 3 years ago

Living in S.A and our decade long power crisis it is rather noticable to see solar panels now appearing on homes and office parks.

I got 3.7Kw panels, 5Kw inverter and 10Kw battery - only our stove is not on the PV circuit - water heater is already solar based (not PV) and it has been brought some measure of sanity back to our lives.

The worst outages was 6 hours daily.

Should have done this a long time ago but it is now helped by banks tailoring financing packages for such installs.

enslavedrobot• 3 years ago

In Australia they deregulated the solar industry. Now you can get rooftop solar for around 44 cents a watt installed (66 cents Australian).

China solar module prices keep diving

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