Last edited Sun Mar 24, 2013, 08:40 AM - Edit history (1)

On edit: Do I have to make it rain snarks?

as well as wind, wave, and hydro.

They need lots of new generation even without counting a desperate need to shift away from coal.

Invest $10-12B in a nuclear plant and you get one plant with limited maximum capacity that won't start producing power for at least a decade. SunTech is producing about 1.8GW of panels per year. That means 18GW of solar will be manufactured and producing power right where it's needed worldwide before the nuke plant comes online in its single location. Even with capacity factor figured in the nuclear plant can't come close to matching the solar output and the solar plant will probably keep churning out panels for at least another 10 years after that.

Spending for nuclear power is a waste of money if your goal is addressing climate change.

Several errors that you have yet to address (many of which are made evident in recent news - including this OP):

1) Building manufacturing capacity does not mean that it will be used
2) Using capacity does not mean that the inventory will be sold
3) Selling inventory does not mean that the price exceeded your cost to produce it.
4) The cost of the nuclear plant is the vast majority of the price to produce the electricity. The price of the PV plant does not include the raw materials to produce the panels, nor the cost to ship, install, and connect them to the grid (whcih add up to MUCH more than the cost of the plant).
5) 20-30 years from now (if still operating), the plant will be producing panels to replace the current generation (for little net gain), while the reactor is still pumping out clean power sixty years from now. In fact, it's likely that the current plant will be retooled for new solar technologies at least a couple times in the coming 20-30 years

Other manufacturers were disappointed. Everyone's waiting for capacity to drop so they can get back to some sort of profitable prices. I laughed pretty hard when the stock prices on the other companies initially rose.

I also read an article last week that China may drop some of the large installation subsidies, which may tip some more solar cos over. Right now the ones doing projects have been the only ones making a profit.

Prices have to go up. The loans are being rolled over with interest, so the debt burden keeps growing. They can manufacture inexpensively compared to non-Chinese outfits, but they are all losing money and in fact their overall position is getting worse.

Either demand grows considerably so that they can raise prices without cutting capacity, or they have to cut capacity. But it is government or government-controlled banks which are mostly into them, so....

The reason this one was allowed to default is that a lot of foreign investors were in. This will scrape off those liabilities and improve the position of the local interests in the company. The ones that are mainly domestically funded are in mostly the same position, but the SIVs and the banks are capitalizing interest and principal into new loans.

With the ever-growing debt loads, it is probable that the Chinese government will eventually have to write off a lot of that in order to get these companies back to a reasonable financial position. Indian companies are now looking into the business.

This will not last forever. I think it is a great time to buy solar panels!

And while the polysilicon makers are aggressively investing in expanding production the chinese aren't reducing subsidies for installs, they are shifting the money from large scale projects to small scale in order to get power to where it is most needed - into areas that aren't grid connected.

Have you considered that the tariffs being slapped on China are in part responsible for the path Suntech is following? They skin Wall St, Wuxi pays off the chinese banks and and they keep Suntech's 1.8GW of annual production rolling without a pause while a debate commences over whether a bankruptcy is a subsidy. (This is the kind of shenanigan the nuclear industry is very familiar with btw. They have a habit of building plants that can't be operated profitably then restructuring to turn the plant into a cash cow.)
And remember, there is no reason that this should be an exclusively Chinese act - keep your eye on German solar makers.

Prices are predicted to continue their decline - hitting around $0.42/w by 2015.

That isn't really here nor there though for the US where the module cost has become a minor fraction of overall installation costs. We need to work of eliminating the roadblocks the utilities and local governments have thrown up against small scale generation. That is a problem FERC is actively - repeat actively - working on right now.

Everyone involved in the Chinese industry knows that prices have to come up for those companies to get back to breaking even.

They are losing money hand over fist. The only thing that keeps them operating is constant new borrowing:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-24/suntech-collapse-stokes-solar-volatility-china-overnight.html

Even the Taiwan players are slumping:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/05/could-taiwan-be-the-next-big-solar-manufacturing-hub

They aren't as debt-loaded. But they are all reporting losses as well. There is some theory that the trade tariffs may restore profitability there, which would be nice, because they have mostly reported losses for over a year:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/11/us-taiwan-solar-idUSBRE92A0UH20130311

What's interesting about this is that currently Indian manufacturing might not ramp up because of the below-production-cost sales.

Eventually, if demand grows enough to absorb capacity, costs will rise. At that point, the question will be whether the existing companies will be so loaded up with debt that they can ever be profitable without having the debt written off.

Stilll, all these companies are selling panels below the cost of production, and I don't think this will last. How can the "winners" in the industry keep going with these types of numbers?
http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=3514.TW

That's the best of the Taiwanese mfrs, running at a loss.

There is far more unused capacity in the market than commonly realized. A lot of the Chinese lines are dead, with capacity being shifted to Taiwan.

The Indian mfrs have been agitating to basically shut down all imports. If they succeed, you are going to see very large capacity growth in India:
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/economy/indian-solar-programme-misses-target-on-tardy-project-implementation/article4529575.ece

Here's an interesting page where one can track some of the market price changes:
http://pvinsights.com/

The reason the national government cut off the lifeline was because they want capacity to decline so that prices can rise enough to make ends meet again.

You keep missing that even at prices below their cost of production (and even with the national government buying up inventory), they can't sell as much as they are making.

Global demand is expected to double again by 2015

Expected by you perhaps... but we've already seen how far off your expectations can be just two years later... now haven't we?

And yes demand is expected to double. That's why the makers of polysilicon are currently investing in increasing production capacity.

Remember when you were certain that China had already produced 35GW (45GW for the world) in 2011?

What's the prediction for 2013 installs?

We're done.

You misread a prediction (itself optomistic) that cumulative PV demand would double in the next three years (which would be possible with very little additional growth) and thought that it meant actual annual demand would double.

They aren't the same thing. Demand outside China could actually shrink this year (for the first time in a VERY long time).

We're done.

As usual, you were "done" when you decided to let your wishful thinking control your interpretation of reality. But hey... if I were stuck with your prior predictions, I'd probably look for an excuse to end the conversation as well.

If anyone actually expected demand to double in the next three years, solar stocks wouldn't be sitting at "who will die next?" levels. It would be easy to get financing to roll debt over if demand were expected to exceed current capacity by so much.