Misblog

Originally Published September 06, 2009; Last Updated July 21, 2010; Last Republished July 21, 2010:

While we waste resources, effort, capital, human life, and global good will on King Bush the Idiot's Afghanistan and Iraq War debacles, wars of a different type are heating up (literally).

Economic wars and the weapon of choice of weapon for the initial skirmish is low cost solar panels used for capturing and transforming our sun's energy. It seems China has made an economic bet that its infinite low cost labor force can deliver tennis shoe like scales of economies to the manufacture of solar panels—they maybe right¹.

"It's unfortunate that the spirit of efficient allocation of resources based on marginal cost advantages has gone, and claims of dumping, often groundless, are increasingly used as a tool to protect inefficient production,"--Reuters quoting ReneSola Ltd CFO--

Regardless, of the merits or eventual outcome of the inevitable "dumping litigation" China's leadership deserves huge credit for advancing the bet, debate, and global competition in a sustainable living market.

Of course there is spectacular and supreme irony in wannabe capitalists complaining of being out competed by aspiring socialists²!

Blog:

• UPDATED 10/27/2009 White House Blog, The Smart Grid: Creating Jobs, Saving Energy and Cutting Electric Bills.

  How wonderful to see our President visiting and promoting a small (75 25MWt) but very important Florida Desoto solar farm—converting approximately 75 25 units of thermal solar energy to about 25 8 units of electricity.

  

  Much tough work (jobs) remains in the area of increasing a 30% conversion efficiency³, significantly above state of the art; reduction of transmission lose; improved local and distance electricity storage; and grid infrastructure development and roll-out. What a fantastic beginning.

  It should be noted that photovoltaic (pv) material can be used in forming arbitrary shapes and designs (e.g.roof, rock, sign, fence)—here a rectangular flat-panel is used to maximize the panel area and thus solar flux input as it tracks the sun's arc across the sky.

Web:

• UPDATED 07/21/2010 UPI, Oregon first in solar nanotechnology.

• UPDATED 06/02/2010 UPI Pictures, Obama tours solar panel company in [Fremont,] California.

  Solyndra's CEO Chris Gronet takes our versatile President and first marketeer in chief on a tour of the company's solar panel fabrication facility located in Fremont, California.

  Kudos to our amazing President for whom no issue or problem, related to rebuilding America seems too big or too small.

• UPDATED 10/27/2009 WP Transcript, President Obama delivers remarks at solar energy center.
• UPDATED 10/27/2009 CSM, Obama awards $3.4 billion in ’smart grid’ grants.

• UPDATED 09/14/2009 Reuters, U.S. tire duties fuel trade tension with China.

  • NYT, China-U.S. Trade Dispute Has Broad Implications

• UPDATED 09/09/2009 Reuters, Google plans new mirror for cheaper solar power.

  "In two to three years we could be demonstrating a significant scale pilot system that would generate a lot of power and would be clearly mass manufacturable at a cost that would give us a levelized cost of electricity that would be in the 5 cents or sub 5 cents a kilowatt hour range,"--Google Engineer Bill Weihl--

  Amazement on Herculean scales and very Google like, if achieved!

• UPDATED 09/08/2009 NYT, U.S. Company and China Plan Solar Project
• Reuters, Not so sunny: trade war looms in solar space
  

-----notes-----

1. If a manufacturer (in this case an entire country) thinks it has a comparative advantage in a particular area and that the economies of scale are expected to be large enough to drive marginal costs to near zero it may initially invest huge sums to capture that market. Once the market is captured it can recoup its initial investment and accumulated economic losses.

The risk is that you miscalculate and do not capture the market or achieve the expected scales of economies or your competitors out compete you.

2. The irony should not mask the extremely complex questions involved in ensuring that competition takes place on a level, non-corrupt, and fair practices playing field or that communist China is a hybrid economy in transition and still required to impute costs.

(e.g. see recent reports on WTO dispute between aircraft manufacturers Airbus and Boeing; Reuters, WTO raps European export aid for Airbus: sources)

3. As we "unwind" (cleanup) the financial schemes (mess) on Wall Street perhaps our physicists can get back to work doing physics instead of wowing hedge fund gamblers.

An unfortunate result of running the financial schemes is that it distorts the economy—it's as if everybody suddenly became casino dealers for the gamblers and the people who service them.

Makes its more difficult or impossible to find anybody to help run your farm—at least until the house of cards (casino) collapses.