Comment on 40GW of solar panels gathering dust in European warehouses

CookieJarObserver@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• a4ng3l@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  They went up 30% over 2023… according to my installer it’s due to availability shortage… I guess someone is making them artificially more expensive because greed.

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  • CookieJarObserver@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Of course they are.

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• Chup@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The problem is the origin and forced labour.

  Most of the cheap panels in storage are made in China, while the European manufacturer’s cannot produce at the same price. China also uses Uyghur forced labour to get those low prices www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636

  So making them cheaper is not really an option, unless the EU also wants to go for forced labour camps to compete with China. But it could work the other way around by adding tariffs to Chinese panels or restrict imports if there is a connection to forced labour. The US already added tariffs to Chinese solar panels last year and expanded them reuters.com/…/us-says-solar-imports-four-southeas…

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  • CookieJarObserver@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That sounds like a reason to size them and forbid further imports of that stuff.

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• Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Doesn’t sound like price is an issue, they don’t have enough people to install them and other problems.

  a growing number of solar panels are sitting in storage because of various bottlenecks and barriers along the supply chain, including labour shortages, critical material delays and long interconnection queues.

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  • perestroika@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I think the same.

    In the country where I live, thare are regions where the grid doesn’t accept new production capacity - because installed capacity covers local demand and electricity cannot get where it’s needed.

    Also, planning is slow and permits are issued slowly - I have an acquaintance who created a semi-legal solar park because waiting for permits would take too long. Electrically, everything is fine, professionals wrote the project and did the job. The parish just wasn’t informed, only the grid company was. Since it’s a small park, it flies under the radar. :o

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    • Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yes, this backlog seems to being caused by infrastructure and training falling short of where it should be (or solar going faster than expected). It should have been predicted and plans set in place years ago so this would all be seamless.

      The concern now is that production will be throttled back and the companies doing the installations will suffer.

      Here in the UK they cut the feed-in-tariff (the amount you get paid for putting spare electricity back into the grid) and that wrecked the industry overnight.

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