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Comment by Clyde Childers on August 26, 2009 at 2:57pm

Gary

Lets use the National Energy Lottery fund to match the feed-in Tarriffs enacted in each state on one to one base. Then we don't raise any Federal or state taxes because we could have voluntary partication on power bill that I am willing to spend more for renewable energy. Thius whole thing can finance without any new taxes. I love the idea of volunatary agreement of make this earth better along with National Energy Lottery. This mean I don''t have force my Ideas down anyone's throat...if I dont believe the earth is getting warmer; that is find, I do..and I am willing to pay for the right to have better earth. Voluntary payment by lottery and billing is great method of financing feed-in tarriffs.

Clyde

Comment by William Engwer on August 26, 2009 at 2:56pm

For some strange reason, it seems to be unusual for American capital to want to invest in America's industrial base.
For example, both Cirrus Design (builds the Cirrus SR20 and 22 airplanes, and a small jet) and Epic Aircraft (which builds some of the world's most beautiful airplanes, period) had to turn to the Saudis for funding. When American capital can't be raised to fund American projects, there's something seriously wrong with the business model. I guess it seemed easier to back mortgages for people who couldn't possibly make the future ballooning payments, re-package and re-sell the trash loans to off-load the risk, and reap the short term profits, rather than actually invest in creating REAL wealth, which comes from manufacturing. Gee, that worked out real well for all of the rest of us, eh?

What's it going to take for America's financial elite to wake up and realize that without an industrial base, there is no real new money, just old money getting moved around, becoming worth less and less, and opening America up to be exploited by whoever actually MAKES the stuff Americans buy? WCE

Comment by Gary Fosburg on August 26, 2009 at 1:42pm

So, if we could get the National Energy Lottery concept off the ground, it could create 40,000 winners a week. And if the majority of winners install solar panels in their homes, we will just specify that solar panels must be made by an America Company. Unfortunately, we are now in a Global economy situation where we must compete. We just have to get smarter.
http://nationalenergylottery.blogspot.com/

Comment by Robert Schultz on August 26, 2009 at 1:29pm

I worked for Honeywell Electronics for 10 years. We tore down a production line and helped to package it for shipment to Thailand. Had to laugh a year later, when they had problems getting regular production shipments out. Getting laid off there was a blessing, found a much better job.

Comment by William Engwer on August 26, 2009 at 12:18pm

Gary, you're absolutely right on target. The problem is that so many of the CYA (that's Cover Your Ass) motivated managers do what all the OTHER CYA motivated managers do, and they follow each other to the slaughter like blind sheep. When China is making solar cells in the US, and Korea is making cars here, yeah, there are jobs, but the PROFITS are all headed out of town, and we've become a third world country ourselves. William Engwer

Comment by Gary Fosburg on August 26, 2009 at 11:41am

Feed-in tariffs are ok but here's something to think about.
Being in the electronics industry for 30 years, I've seen many times where corporations have sent manufacturing overseas. I was a Program Manager for a company that was producing product for a large American computer corporation. They decided to send off-shore. I politely told them that they would be back in less than a year. It took them only 6 months to come back to America. Why? For several reasons.
1. Cost. The cost of freight and 30 days on the water affected time-lines.
2. Cost. Sending Engineers over to fix problems. Just one Engineer sent
over to resolve issues was a quick $10,000 bill. Amortize that into a printed circuit board savings and cost started becoming an issue.
3. Labor. Most printed circuit board assembly is mostly done with automation now. A service contract cost for automated equipment is the same in America as it is in off-shore facilities. And the Engineering support for that equipment is also the same. Therefore, very mimial labor involved.
4. And finally QUALITY. If you have just one error or Engineering Change Order that needs implementation, huge problem. You have a dock of discrepant material, you have a boat-load of defective product coming to America, and you have a down-line situation at the factory. That's a lot of product to be reworked in the states to bring up to conformance.

The cost of shipping/tarifs/trucking for Solar Panels would be very expensive.
I am sure that we, as Americans, and our ingenuity can create methods, procedures, materials, and automation for manufacturing solar panels here in the States that would compete very effectively with any country shipping panels to US. If we can increase our volumn so prices drop, we could effectively price them out of the market. If just one technological break-thru comes from the stimulus bill and we implement quickly, off-shore companies will never be able to keep up, especially if large volumn of "down-rev" solar panels are on a slow-boat to America.
Something to thing about.

Comment by Robert Schultz on August 26, 2009 at 9:59am

I agree Clyde. China will produce cheap export solar panels and wind mills because they do not have very many restrictions on manufacturing in terms of pollution controls, etc. We need to have feed-in tariffs to encourage use of American products.

Comment by Clyde Childers on August 26, 2009 at 9:40am

Gentlemen

Untill we enact Feed-in tariffs like the rest of industrial world has, our solar and wnd industries will fail. It is another example our inability to understand that we need to adopt an industrual policy for US. Our failure to adopt this policy and set key agendas for our industries will mean we as nation will slide into "bannna republic." Because China has adopted feed-in tarriffs, they can dump cheap solar and wind products into the US market while their market pays a premium price. The Japan Inc did to us in 1970-80 on consummer electronics, Korea on Steel, and now China on solar. Wake up dummies!!! Just my optinion.

Comment by allen bauman on August 25, 2009 at 9:59pm

PLEASE READ ENTIRE POST.

Below is a letter written to my Senators and Congresswoman. Within the letter is an article from the New York Times concerning underhanded Chinese tactics to become the world leader in solar panel manufacturing.

PLEASE READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AND SEND SIMILAR LETTERS TO YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES. I BELIEVE THIS IS AN IMPORTANT ISSUE AND MUST BE ADDRESSED BY OUR GOVERNMENT IMMEDIATELY. COPY AND PASTE IF YOU WANT TO THEN POST ANY RESPONSES YOU RECEIVE.

Allen Bauman
District Leader NY-04

The following article is from the New York Times. It is outrageous that China be allowed to use any back handed behavior necessary to capture the solar panel market without serious admonition from the American Government. As my Senator I insist that you light a fire under any and every agency involved in trade with China, contact the Chinese government and let them know in no uncertain terms that what they are doing is unacceptable and we will do what is necessary to protect this fledgling industry which I believe is critical to the future health and well being of the American economy. I am not a protectionist and I believe in global free trade, as long as there is a level playing field. I will also be sending this article to Senator Gillebrand and Congresswoman McCarthy imploring them to take action as well. It is my hope that you will meet with them and as many NYS Representatives as you can muster. This issue directly affects Long Island which has the potential to become a research, development and manufacturing center for solar technology. This also has the potential to affect upstate New York as well. Its a perfect lower wage, educated area which could benefit from new green industry. SUNY Binghamton is doing cutting edge research in this technology.


China Racing Ahead of U.S. in the Drive to Go Solar
Ryan Pyle for The New York Times

Suntech, China’s biggest solar panel maker, has reduced the price of panels sold in America to build market share.

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By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: August 24, 2009

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Ryan Pyle for The New York Times

Chinese companies like Suntech, above, plan to build assembly plants in the United States.
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WUXI, China — President Obama wants to make the United States “the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy,” but in his seven months in office, it is China that has stepped on the gas in an effort to become the dominant player in green energy — especially in solar power, and even in the United States.

Chinese companies have already played a leading role in pushing down the price of solar panels by almost half over the last year. Shi Zhengrong, the chief executive and founder of China’s biggest solar panel manufacturer, Suntech Power Holdings, said in an interview here that Suntech, to build market share, is selling solar panels on the American market for less than the cost of the materials, assembly and shipping.

Backed by lavish government support, the Chinese are preparing to build plants to assemble their products in the United States to bypass protectionist legislation. As Japanese automakers did decades ago, Chinese solar companies are encouraging their United States executives to join industry trade groups to tamp down anti-Chinese sentiment before it takes root.

The Obama administration is determined to help the American industry. The energy and Treasury departments announced this month that they would give $2.3 billion in tax credits to clean energy equipment manufacturers. But even in the solar industry, many worry that Western companies may have fragile prospects when competing with Chinese companies that have cheap loans, electricity and labor, paying recent college graduates in engineering $7,000 a year.

“I don’t see Europe or the United States becoming major producers of solar products — they’ll be consumers,” said Thomas M. Zarrella, the chief executive of GT Solar International, a company in Merrimack, N.H., that sells specialized factory equipment to solar panel makers around the world.

Since March, Chinese governments at the national, provincial and even local level have been competing with one another to offer solar companies ever more generous subsidies, including free land, and cash for research and development. State-owned banks are flooding the industry with loans at considerably lower interest rates than available in Europe or the United States.

Suntech, based here in Wuxi, is on track this year to pass Q-Cells of Germany, to become the world’s second-largest supplier of photovoltaic cells, which would put it behind only First Solar in Tempe, Ariz.

Hot on Suntech’s heels is a growing list of Chinese corporations backed by entrepreneurs, local governments and even the Chinese military, all seeking to capitalize on an industry deemed crucial by China’s top leadership.

Dr. Shi pointed out that other governments, including in the United States, also assist clean energy industries, including with factory construction incentives.

China’s commitment to solar energy is unlikely to make a difference soon to global warming. China’s energy consumption is growing faster than any other country’s, though the United States consumes more today. Beijing’s aim is to generate 20,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2020 — or less than half the capacity of coal-fired power plants that are built in China each year.

Solar energy remains far more expensive to generate than energy from coal, oil, natural gas or even wind. But in addition to heavy Chinese investment and low Chinese costs, the global economic downturn and a decline in European subsidies to buy panels have lowered prices.

The American economic stimulus plan requires any project receiving money to use steel and other construction materials, including solar panels, from countries that have signed the World Trade Organization’s agreement on free trade in government procurement. China has not.

In response to this, and to reduce shipping costs, Suntech plans to announce in the next month or two that it will build a solar panel assembly plant in the United States, said Steven Chan, its president for global sales and marketing.

“It’ll be to facilitate sales — ‘buy American’ and things like that,” Mr. Chan said, adding that the factory would have 75 to 150 workers and be located in Phoenix, or somewhere in Texas.

But 90 percent of the workers at the $30 million factory will be blue-collar laborers, welding together panels from solar wafers made in China, Dr. Shi said.

Yingli Solar, another large Chinese manufacturer, said on Thursday that it also had a “preliminary plan” to assemble panels in the United States.

Western rivals, meanwhile, are struggling. Q-Cells of Germany announced last week that it would lay off 500 of its 2,600 employees because of declining sales. It and two other German companies, Conergy and SolarWorld, are particularly indignant that German subsidies were the main source of demand for solar panels until recently.

“Politicians might ask whether this is still the right way to do this, German taxpayers paying for Asian products,” said Markus Wieser, a Q-Cells spokesman.

But organizing resistance to Chinese exports could be difficult, particularly as Chinese discounting makes green energy more affordable.

Even with Suntech acknowledging that it sells below the marginal cost of producing each additional solar panel — that is, the cost after administrative and development costs are subtracted — any antidumping case, in the United States, for example, would have to show that American companies were losing money as a result.

First Solar — the solar leader, in Tempe — using a different technology from many solar panel manufacturers, is actually profitable, while the new tax credits now becoming available may help other companies.

Even organizing a united American response to Chinese exports could be difficult. Suntech has encouraged executives at its United States operations to take the top posts at the two main American industry groups, partly to make sure that these groups do not rally opposition to imports, Dr. Shi said.

The efforts of Detroit automakers to win protection from Japanese competition in the 1980s were weakened by the presence of Honda in their main trade group; they expelled Honda in 1992.

Some analysts are less pessimistic about the prospects for solar panel manufacturers in the West. Joonki Song, a partner at Photon Consulting in Boston, said that while large Chinese solar panel manufacturers are gaining market share, smaller ones have been struggling.

Mr. Zarrella of GT Solar said that Western providers of factory equipment for solar panel manufacturers would remain competitive, and Dr. Shi said that German equipment providers “have made a lot of money, tons of money.”

The Chinese government is requiring that 80 percent of the equipment for China’s first municipal power plant to use solar energy, to be built in Dunhuang in northwestern China next year, be made in China.

Dr. Shi said his company would try to prevent similar rules in any future projects.

The reason is clear: almost 98 percent of Suntech’s production goes overseas.
Sign in to Recommend More Articles in Business » A version of this article appeared in print on August 25, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.

Comment by Gary Fosburg on July 26, 2009 at 11:18am

So, here's the link to the indestructible plastic that I mentioned previously. How about a car battery that never gets hot....meaning longer travel?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5158972/Starlite-the-nuclear-blast-defying-plastic-that-could-change-the-world.html
But I think no one is reading this bulletin board anyway based upon the comments and time lag. Oh well, I'll just plug along

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