Saturday, October 08, 2011

Facepalm!

Goofy green ‘power’ has arrived in its own self-referencial hell:

“Competitiveness: 48% of all solar systems installed in Germany originate from China because German capacity simply cannot meet the demand.”

That’s only half true; German companies have ceased to make cells in Germany because you can’t afford to do it in Germany anymore; the process is rather energy-intensive so you better do it in a place where electricity is cheap. I am not being ironic – the cost of electricity rises because of the cross-subsidizing of wind and solar installations; this cross-subsidy must be paid by private and commercial customers – 3.5 cent a kWH, no exceptions, even though the base tariff of an industrial consumer is about half of what households pay. So the green subsidy regime prevents the cost-effective production of green solar cells in Germany – the green death spiral in action.

So, if we absolutely had to we could produce the cells and modules ourselves but it would become economic carnage.

We still assemble some of the modules in Germany but this is being ramped down too and the work is sent to Malaysia by several German companies…
Frankly, I don’t think that there’s any irony left to find in this stuff.

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