[RE-wrenches] Defective modules-Chinese crap?

[Troy Harvey]

Bill,

As far as I know, there is no american manufacturer that is left standing who has been in the business for decades. Solarworld's USA plant, if that is who you mean, has bounced around ownership at least 3 times in the last 20 years (arco, shell, siemans, solarworld), and they shut down their California plant 1.5 years ago.

Heck, there are hardly any US manufacturers left. We used to count on USA or german companies being the standard, but now we've seen a bunch go out of the PV business that had been trustworthy names (Schott or Evergreen anyone?). The Chinese dominate the top 10 producers list, but even they are hurting with razor thin margins, putting them at risk. (though lots of Chinese businesses seem to be happy with 2-4% margins at huge volumes)

The question is who to trust? I'm not seeing any stability in the USA manufacturers either.

One option we've been looking at is only using companies that carry 3rd party Warranty insurance, like Canadian Solar.

Another is only buy from big multinationals: Kyocera, Samsung, Sharp who will still be around (though not necessarily still in the PV biz)

But what I'd like to see is a open survey of failure rates by manufacturer, like these for canadian solar and Yingli: http://www.warrantyweek.com/archive/ww20111208.html

(notice they do creep up a bit around 2009, Yingli doesn't look as good as CSI)


Troy Harvey
---------------------
Principal Engineer
Heliocentric
801-453-9434
taharvey at heliocentric.org



On May 29, 2013, at 9:01 AM, frenergy <frenergy at psln.com> wrote:

> Hilton,
>  
>         I have not been experiencing anything unusual in failure rates.....of course I have not caved to the up-front lower cost tease of Chinese PVs and have only sold USA made PVs built by manus in biz for decades.  This choice has lost me only a few customers, maybe now they will come back.  It seems interesting to me that you would mention 3 Chinese companies as 'first tier'.  When I think of first tier I think of companies that have been around for much longer than that.
>  
>         You are absolutely right though, as an industry, "we" need to identify this problem and deal with it now, like now, lest we go the path of solar thermal in the 80's.  Possibly the solar bandwagon has become overloaded?
>  
> Bill
> <FRS_working_logo.jpg>
>  
>  
>  
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Hilton Dier III
> To: re-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org
> Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 6:08 AM
> Subject: [RE-wrenches] Defective modules
> 
> Greetings wrenches,
> 
> I'm sure many of you have seen this article in the New York Times:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/business/energy-environment/solar-powers-dark-side.html?hp&_r=1&
> 
> I have already gotten an email from a panicked client asking about canceling his project.
> 
> First question: Has anybody dealt with defective modules lately, and if so, what brands?
> Second question: How much does this affect first-tier manufacturers (Trina, Suntech, Yingli...) and how much of this is "no-name" brands?
> Third question: Is this restricted to a particular technology such as thin film?
> 
> And the big question: How do we deal with this? I can imagine the fossil fuel and nuclear industries promoting this story with enthusiasm.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Hilton
> -- 
> Hilton Dier III
> Renewable Energy Design
> Partner, Solar Gain LLC
> 453 East Hill Rd.
> Middlesex, VT 05602
> 
> 
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