Solyndra may be a hot potato...

Yep, a couple of fundamentally...

distorted industries in competition for an as yet existent market. Hard to say what the answer here is. I suspect that until (or if ) the competition issue with other energy sources is decided by market pricing there will be a continuing pissing contest about this. Solar One actually produces the cheapest panel in the world but it is an 11-12% efficiency unit as against the Chinese panels at 15% or so. In any event the numbers at the consumer level don't make sense for any of them on an unsubsidized basis, so there is no natural market place yet. And with homeowners strapped who is going to purchase all these panels if governments don't in some fashion?:hmm:
 
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we will

Eventually find that most of the "solar money" went into the Obama war chest
Just a big money laundering scheme. But if a tree falls in the woods ? does anybody know?
 
I've been considering the Chinese issue...

I've done quite a bit of reading in the last three weeks on this topic of the Chinese undercutting the US manufacturers and now the Germans, to the point my brain was about to explode. The big picture and the background positioning is quite more interesting than what I thought it was. I have to hand it to the Chinese leadership, they don't think quarterly, they think out 30-40 years at a time...read on. I think I see another way on this solar undercutting issue, that would benefit us, long-term, as well. I've concluded, what's the point in investing in homegrown manufacturing when Chinese competition comes along and crushes it all? What's the point in struggling, when by the end of the year, 85% of PV cells manufactured worldwide are expected to be manufactured in Asia? This from a study by the IMS Research firm. Maybe the proper angle to take depends upon a little cooperation with the Chinese. Let them build the damn cells, they can do it cheaply. Prices are diving 15%-20% yearly with regularity, which only helps us. Perhaps the real jobs are in engineering and other area still untapped (more on this in a second) for home or business tie-in. Also, consider the services are local for an installed base. The installers for the US market are located in the US, not China. You can't outsource that, can you? How many heating and air conditioning guys are out there? How many plumbers? Imagine a whole, new other industry of similar experts popping up, with all the industries that in turn support them. Now I learned an interesting thing about the government mandated push for solar in China. All buildings, residential and business, are getting panels. Even a pig farm (why?) received them. With power being produced locally on site, the requirement for an upgraded, expensive grid infrastructure is partially removed, with the eventual upgrade and completion not being imperative. Money that would be spent on a vast upgraded national grid structure, in an attempt to bring one billion people into the 21st century, is being directed to other needed areas. But more importantly in the here and now, the locally produced power takes the load of the aging and failing grid (sound familiar, rolling blackouts?). Perhaps they're on to something.
 
Very interesting post...

:woot:

It's a little difficult to imagine how any other solution is viable anyway. The US just can't compete on every tradeable product front and it is clear solar panel manufacturing is one where it just can't.

Your capsule explanation of the Chinese strategy on the avoidance of infrastructure spending is one I had not seen so economically stated-food for thought there!
 
Yes...

Solar panel power generation is a lot like cell phones, the lack of widespread infrastructure allows 2nd and 3rd world countries to leapfrog to 1st world in those aspects.

Soon they will out-pace so-called 1st world countries who insist on old fashioned systems that rely on infrastructure (and phone-specific calling plans, heh).
 
"Small" hot potato?

a POTUS giving a half-billion dollars of public money to a major campaign donor is small potatoes? :2c:
 
A couple of points

1) My reference to 'small potatoes' was as against a trade war with China, so on the front I am simply correct; Solyndra representing a maximum of 500M or so and a trade war with China easily representing a 100 times that.

2) Your characterization of the loan guarantee being a give away by the POTUS to a campaign contributor is inaccurate in beinf highly simplified and incomplete. It is also inaccurate in that the give away was entirely contigent on Solyndra going bankrupt and the creditors being made whole by the government-at best an odd way to tranfer money favors to anyone I would submit. Also, had Solyndra not gone bankrupt no government money would have been transfered to anyone at all. Besides this loan guarantee originated in the Bush Administration.

3) By many of your previous comments in here it clear you consider Obama to be, among other things, dishonest, venal, insincere.....
Consequently when you accuse him, as you do over Sloyndra, your argument (or comment) is perilously close to mere question begging.

:2c:
 
Except cell phones...

don't stop working in bad weather:hmm2:

Also,one of the main contributors to being competitive in the world economy is reliable infrastructure; it is yet to prove out that solar can provide this in the absence of a backup grid for a really large economy like China.
 
I'm not making accusations or allegations

that haven't already been made. The administration is going to great lengths to avoid transparency. This may well prove to be a serious error in judgment. :2c:
 
It is the accuracy...

not the originality of the accusation that is at issue. It is simply not the case that Obama gave half a billion to a donor, it just isn't. That is just spin and agitprop from the GOP.

As far as transparency goes, it's mostly out there. The guarantee was made and the company went pear shaped and it was done without much regard for the very valid reservations of some of the folks in the bureaucracy and was hurried along for the flimsy sake of a photo op. What else is there to know? The guarantee itself was an error on principle and pushing the issue one of judgement, but spinning this in a 'presumption of corruption' way is dubious in the extreme and is convincing insofar as one is disposed to believe it a priori.
 
That is demonstrably false

as the major private backer of Solyndra is George Kaiser, an Oklahoma oilman and fundraiser for President Obama.
 
And Obama handed over $500M

to him? No he did not. He approved of and apparently pushed the loan guarantee which is not the same thing, either legally or ethically. By your standard any approval of, or advocacy of, any government funding or guarantee that goes to a campaign contributor is what? corruption? You are engaging in, and insisting on a category mistake. What Obama and his administration did is not defensible on many grounds but, to reiterate, Obama did not hand over half a billion dollars to anyone which is the accusation you made or repeated here.
 
He either gave this guy money...

or he didn't. Saying "that isn't the way it works" doesn't hack it for the purposes of this discussion. And the article doesn't say anything either except that the people involved in getting a loan guarantee for Solyndra discussed getting a loan guarntee for Solyndra. So what? How does this translate to Obama handing Kaiser $500M, which is what you asserted?
It seems to me you are being obtuse on the issue that this was an in- place guarantee program and not a handout of money. Had Solyndra stayed afloat and repaid their loan no money of any kind would have changed hands from the public to anyone. How is this simple fact not germane in your thinking?
 
http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/Letters/112th/110911KaiserEmails.pdf

"Earlier, on Feb. 27, 2010, Levit wrote to Mitchell to describe an evidently successful meeting with White House officials in Vice President Biden’s office. “The about had an orgasm in Biden’s office when we mentioned Solyndra,” Levit wrote. Mitchell responded: “That’s awesome! Get us a DOE loan.”

In October 2010, Kaiser urged Mitchell and Levit to “pursue your contacts with the WH,” in an effort to help Solyndra, which by then had encountered substantial financial difficulties, and “keep us up to speed.” They appear to be discussing efforts to have the DOE loan restructured, which ultimately did happen in February 2011, under terms that dramatically favored private investors like Kaiser."

and earlier today: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...sg=AFQjCNGsMPPFFprOp6mBYLlO6zeKOL3z5Q&cad=rja
 
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I'm not going to....

engage in a discussion that is mere insistence.
You said that the POTUS gave half a billion to a major contributor. No such thing happened. Other things may have happened but not that. So, enough. If you want to rephrase the accusation to bring it into some kind of conformity with actual events then do so, otherwise I'm done with this.
 
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