China's Solar Giants Quietly Shed a Third of Their Workforces Last Year (zerohedge.com) 27
schwit1 shares a report: China's biggest solar firms shed nearly one-third of their workforces last year, company filings show, as one of the industries hand-picked by Beijing to drive economic growth grapples with falling prices and steep losses. The job cuts illustrate the pain from the vicious price wars being fought across Chinese industries, including solar and electric vehicles, as they grapple with overcapacity and tepid demand. The world produces twice as many solar panels each year as it uses, with most of them manufactured in China.
Longi Green Energy, Trina Solar, Jinko Solar, JA Solar, and Tongwei, collectively shed some 87,000 staff, or 31% of their workforces on average last year, according to a Reuters review of employment figures in public filings.
Longi Green Energy, Trina Solar, Jinko Solar, JA Solar, and Tongwei, collectively shed some 87,000 staff, or 31% of their workforces on average last year, according to a Reuters review of employment figures in public filings.
Kiss cheap shit goodbye (Score:3, Insightful)
The pandemic has made the world nervous about single-country sources. The benefits of Comparative Advantage are being downplayed at the expense of supply resilience.
Not really. (Score:1)
Kiss cheap shit goodbye
Seems unlikely because of "overcapacity and tepid demand". However, "cheap stuff" is already evaporating as a result of tariffs.
The benefits of Comparative Advantage are being downplayed at the expense of supply resilience.
Any change in behavior is more likely due to the market turmoil caused by Trump's unpredictable and inexplicable tariff policies. The situation is so volatiles that even MBAs, who can't see past their noses, are nervous.
I fully expect that when the threat passes that MBAs will go full single-point-of-failure again.
Re:Kiss cheap shit goodbye (Score:4, Interesting)
The pandemic has made the world nervous about single-country sources.
How was the pandemic a cause? I'm thinking that the larger issue is seeing trade threatened through bottlenecks in shipment by sea by piracy, terrorism, and more. If the shipments aren't threatened by overt attacks by missiles or rifle fire on the crew then it could be more subtle such as faked GPS transmissions potentially causing ships to run aground or collide with another vessel. Should there be a successful blockade on one of these choke points then that could make single source commodities much more expensive or simply no longer available. Consider what temporary slow downs through the Suez Canal and Panama Canal did to prices of varied commodities.
China has created a near monopoly on various energy commodities like solar PV cells and complete PV panels, batteries, rare earth magnets, as well as the raw materials to make energy products like lithium. That is making people nervous. If China continues to drive out competition by dumping cheap commodities on the international market then they can use their market dominance later as leverage, much like how Russia got Europe to become overly reliant on Russian natural gas to alter use threats of cutting off supplies to as a means to discourage interference with their invasion of Ukraine.
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This is about automation. The factories are moving to robots and "lights out" manufacturing. Deployment of the panels is being done by drones and tracked robots too now.
Even places that are normally inaccessible or very expensive to get materials to, are becoming solar farms now. The sides of mountains and remote areas.
Re:Chinese Solar is untrustworthy (Score:4, Insightful)
Solar works great when it's made well but Chinese solar is untrustworthy because it's made to fail suddenly and catastrophically as a means of military attack against other countries that buy it.
[Citation Needed]
Re:Chinese Solar is untrustworthy (Score:4, Informative)
Solar works great when it's made well but Chinese solar is untrustworthy because it's made to fail suddenly and catastrophically as a means of military attack against other countries that buy it.
[Citation Needed]
I believe they are referring to this story: Rogue Communication Devices Found in Chinese Solar Power Inverters [slashdot.org]
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Alex Jones is that you?
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How does that work exactly?
Leaving energy on the table? (Score:2)
Once you've built the solar panel, the energy is very close to free.
How could these go unused?
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"Once you've built the solar panel, shipped it, installed it, tested it, and paid any tariffs and other taxes on it, the energy is very close to free, assuming the point-of-use is very close to where the solar panels are installed.."
There, fixed that for you.
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Labour is expensive. If you can DIY though it's cheaper than wood for a fence, it's ridiculously cheap.
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Superinsulation goes a long way towards making that last.
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Retrofit of insulation runs into worse labour cost problem (simplest solution of working from the outside can also run into problems with busybodies).
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The batteries would be handy in our every increasing power failures though.
Power outages have been getting less common in my neighborhood since I bought the house. I'm guessing much of this is from forced repairs by storm damage sustained over the years than any orderly plan for updates and upgrades by the utilities or government. That said I'd expect a battery pack to be far more useful than solar panels to ride out an outage.
Rooftop solar panels are supposed to go offline if there is a loss of power from the utility, that is unless the system can isolate itself for independent
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Once you've built the solar panel, the energy is very close to free.
How could these go unused?
This is what happens when overproduction is used to force competitors out of the market. This is a national Chinese market strategy, to use subsidies, low prices, and dumping to corner a market, and then use that market for international influence. This strategy can work well, but it can also get financially out of hand.
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There's the third world to sell to. Especially in keeping with the quality of most power grids out there.
Why No Price Decrease? (Score:3)
The world produces twice as many solar panels each year as it uses
So why are solar prices going up in price, since 2021, and not coming down?
I keep hearing about oversupply, glut, and now this. Yet, prices are rising rather than falling.
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There was a bit of a bump, but the price per watt lower than 2021 now. I think it was mostly tariffs that were responsible.
We shouldn't be worrying about "dumping" and the like, we should just be buying as many of the damn things as we can get, and making as many of our own as possible. This is about climate change, not protecting our domestic manufacturing.
While I suppose there's beutiful clean coal /s (Score:2)
China as plenty of it.
Coming next month (Score:2)
Chickens coming home to roost (Score:2)
Wait'll you see what's happening to their steel industry.