Bosch Finds Solar Business Unprofitable, Exits 477
New submitter rwise2112 writes "German engineering company Bosch said Friday that it is abandoning its solar energy business, because there is no way to make it economically viable.'We have considered the latest technological advances, cost-reduction potential and strategic alignment, and there have also been talks with potential partners,' Bosch CEO Volkmar Denner said. 'However, none of these possibilities resulted in a solution for the solar energy division that would be economically viable over the long term.'"
Re:FINANCIALLY viable (Score:5, Informative)
Unprofitable (Score:5, Informative)
"European makers of solar energy have accused low cost Asian competitors, especially manufacturers from China, of creating the trouble for their western peers, partly by flooding the market with products at prices far below production costs."
Re:FINANCIALLY viable (Score:5, Informative)
It's called dumping and it is working, Chinese dumping was the main reason EU and US removed the benefits.
Re:Unprofitable (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I love working with PV cells (Score:5, Informative)
But I'm also aware without government subsidies, it's not economically viable. On the large scale.
Yet. The point at which solar energy becomes cheaper than the competition is called 'grid parity', and it's already happened in some countries [triplepundit.com]. Over the next few years we'll see it happen in more and more places.
Re:I love working with PV cells (Score:5, Informative)
China's government subsidizes their solar companies to a much greater degree than the US does; that's why Solyndra couldn't compete.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0320/China-subsidized-solar-panels-US-finds.-Are-tariffs-the-right-response [csmonitor.com]
Re:I love working with PV cells (Score:5, Informative)
But I'm also aware without government subsidies,
The problem aren't government subsidies, but simply that companies in China can produce cheaper solar cells then Bosch can. The solar business is full of companies and lots of competition and it's hard to get a lot of money out of that.
Some solar PV companies in China are also exiting the market. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/20/174828432/chinese-solar-panel-maker-suntech-goes-bankrupt [npr.org]
Fabrication costs need to go down for makers, and ROI needs to go up for consumers.
Re:Simple physics and the law of diminishing retur (Score:5, Informative)
1945 [wikipedia.org].
Re:I love working with PV cells (Score:4, Informative)
In some places include the mobile and remote. In my case, I picked up a pannel for the motorhome. Payback on the house is beyond the life of the panel at current electric rates with hydro, wind, and large scale solar nearby. On the motorhome, the longer I can leave the gas generator shut off the better I and my neighbors like it. Besides, electric generation with a motorhome genset is not in parity with local grid rates, thus the payback is measured in a few summers on the road.
Re:I love working with PV cells (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, most things benefit from some level of government subsidy.
If you are competing with one of those, and you don't have *any* subsidies, then you're not economically viable because you have higher cost relative to your competition.
Fossil fuels and nuclear power enjoy generous government subsidies, in areas including tax loopholes, military security support for oil producers, cut-rate socialized liability insurance for nuclear risks that private insurers wouldn't touch with a hundred-foot pole, saddling the public with the costs of environmental damage... the list goes on and on. If solar power gets no subsidies relative to all that, of course it can't compete.
If you somehow magically removed *all* government subsidies on everything, then solar power might be "economically viable" again. But thousands of years of history, and human nature in general, show that it is just not going to happen in the real world. Ever, Deal with it.