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Comment by Tireings | Hacker News Reader

Yes but climate change made them so cheap.

Lucky enough for us and everyone else economy of scale kicked in. I'm taking it

s/climate change/China/

The US bungled its lead in photovoltaics and politics prevented us from catching up - so like most other things, China leads the way, and we benefit.

China literally just subsidized soar panel manufacturing to the time of several billions of dollars with the express goal of killing manufacturing everywhere else and then raising prices once the competition was gone.

There's really no reason the US or other major economies couldn't have followed suit. The chinese plan only works because the other major economies are more than willing to give them that manufacturing capacity since it means a local (although somewhat temporary) boon.

The whole plan could have been snookered by the US similarly subsidizing their solar production 10 or 20 years into the chinese plan. Which would have put most of the cost onto China while we reaped the benefits of cheap power production.

The Obama administration tried, but it was too little too late and they were raked over the coals by Republicans for "choosing winners".

But fundamentally solar cell production was (is?) pretty dirty and US environmental regulations were always going to be a stumbling block. One used to be able to spot Chinese solar factories on satellite maps by looking upstream from deadzones, but apparently that has been enough of an embarrassment that even the CCP has started cracking down.

And choosing "losers", specifically Solyndra was shrieked at along the lines of Benghazi

Basically DOE funded research pretty successfully but it only takes one failure for the loud voices to win

Same program funded Tesla as I recall

Example source: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/us/exclusive-controver...

> But fundamentally solar cell production was (is?) pretty dirty

There's nothing "fundamentally" dirty about it. It's not like fossil fuel combustion that inevitably produces a large stream of waste (CO2).

WTO prohibit these types of subsidies. Every other country in the world was trying to follow the rules.

This is why the U.S. was able to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese solar without WTO interference.

Wow, only several billion dollars? That's like 0.1% of the US federal budget.

yeah, pretty smart move. We shoulda done that too - controlling the means of production for energy generation is a pretty useful thing imo.

environmental "awareness" doesn't mean dog poo; environment-friendly will only be prioritized when it's cheaper to do so. That's why government subsidies and taxing are REQUIRED.

The western world should have subsidized it too, now you can't dismiss it because it wasn't organic--because it NEVER would be organic.

China has accounted for the majority of global solar panel manufacturing for over 10 years now:

https://www.statista.com/chart/1576/chinese-solar-photovolta...

Despite that dominance, prices continue to fall:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices

As an addendum, the US also saw a rapid increase in domestic solar panel manufacturing in recent years:

https://seia.org/news/american-solar-panel-manufacturing-cap...

But that was due to government incentives that are now under fire from the Trump administration.

Germany actually started the push.

I heard explanation that at some point silicone prices skyrocketed, so Germany shifted RnD from monocrystals to thin film panels

High prices caused an influx of investment - and silicone prices plummeted, which allowed China to get the crown

Silicone != Silicon. Two different materials. I use silicone caulk to seal things up. I use silicon crystals to make microchips.

So THATS what I've been doing wrong. I'm telling you guys, we're this close to getting competitive chip production to the west.

Until then, can I just buy your overstock of amazing heat resistant silicone spatulas?

SPATULA CITY? SPATULA CITY!

https://youtu.be/4BUDwj_mXKE

I have never seen this before. That was hilarious! Now I have to watch this movie.

Thanks for the laughs.

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