US and China gains in solar

[everything]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10 ... -in-china/

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09 ... p-falling/

The incredible plunge in the price of photovoltaic systems has made solar power an affordable option for much of the world. And, as long as solar is providing a small fraction of the power on a given grid, there's little holding back the addition of new photovoltaic facilities. But as the fraction of solar power grows, managing the fact that it only generates electricity intermittently becomes a significant grid-management challenge.

At that point, factors other than price become significant in determining how much solar energy makes sense. And those factors can vary from country to country. This means that understanding solar's potential requires a country-specific analysis. This week, researchers in China released an analysis of their country, indicating that solar has now reached a point where it's cost-competitive with coal. The report also states that solar (when coupled with storage) could handle nearly half of China's needs by midcentury.

[windwalker]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhtwagr2bSQ

pays to understand the limitations of solar

China, was pretty clear about it's intention towards solar many yrs back.
Worked in a company that was put out business making solar cells using UMG Si

However, there was also an impact on the (at that time) promising and immature industry of metallurgical purification of metal silicon, also known as upgraded metallurgical-grade silicon (UMG-Si). The strong selling point of UMG-Si producers – the production costs – was no longer an asset, leaving UMG-Si with nothing but its weakness – the quality

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _and_costs

Had the sales, but could not compete with China's scale of production......Cost more to produce the cell then market price

Also happened on a larger scale with another company that we installed production equipment for,,,,Quite amazing considering the cost....it too never got to the point of making the cells commercially. Could be wrong, think they now buy the cells from China and selling the panels.

[yeniseri]

USA has too much monetary infusion and reward (ROI) in the fossil fuel industry that they will NEVER fully integrate with "green technology". Probably a hybrid green vision will fit the bill knowing that as long as ROI is strong, green was will lag until it is too late. Watching an expose about the overselling of solar with promises of selling excess "energy" back to the utility sources but that rarely happens depending on the states involved. Some states (guess which ones?) want the citizens to put up the money without incntives from local governments while refusing to buy back the excess generated by the citizens.