Tradeshows are important business events for all branches of industry. The mood at a trade show is often a good barometer of how business is doing in a particular branch.
Solar cemetery? The solar boom dies. (Photo source: US Government)
If times are tough, then one can expect to hear a bit of grumbling from those exhibiting at the trade show, but that’s about it. So when a trade show is cancelled altogether just weeks before it is scheduled to begin, then you know things must be really bad.
This is preceisely what has just happened in the solar industry. Things for the “energy of the future”, solar energy, have gotten so bad that a major tradeshow, Intersolar China 2012, has just been cancelled. The tradeshow had been scheduled to take place from December 12 to 14 at the China Convention Center in Beijing. Now, according to www.pv-magazine.com, the event has been postponed until an unspecified date in 2013. PV magazine cites “difficult market conditions”.
With “difficult market conditions they are likely talking about the tsunami of insolvencies that has swept over the global solar business. A slew of large solar companies likely have cancelled their participation and so many of the exhibition stands would be empty. This is a major embarrassment for proponents of solar energy.
Other German media outlets are now reporting on the Interworld China debacle. Read here, here and here.
PV magazine writes:
Intersolar China opened its doors for the first time just last December in Beijing. Solar Promotion International’s first Chinese tradeshow got off to a slow start, with just 135 of an expected 250 exhibitors showing up. Top-tier solar panel manufacturers like Yingli, Suntech and JA Solar also stood out by not being present at the show.”
Even Siemens Corporation unloads its solar business
Earlier this week, engineering giant Siemens Corporation announced it’s bailing out of the solar biz as well. CO2 Handel writes:
Intersolar first began 20 years ago in Freiburg [Germany] and saw steady growth. […] Over the past several months a number of German manufacturers, among them former market leader Q-Cells, have declared insolvency. On Monday Siemens Corporation announced it would sell its solar business because it had failed to fulfil expectations.”
How many billions in stimulus packages were pumped in to prop up this industry? Now the bubble has popped and consumers are left with higher electric rates and a solar rust belt. In the meantime former solar executives are likely retired and living high on the hog, relaxing on diesel-fuel powered yachts – paid for by “stimulus” dollars.
This has got to be one of the biggest scams of all time.
Slightly off topic but I had to share this:
http://news.stv.tv/politics/196398-climate-change-target-missed-due-to-extremely-cold-weather-in-2010/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
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Next comes the scurrying away from this Green Scam by the politicians who supported it…..example: Premier of Ontario and his right hand man run for the hills after being exposed for screwing tax payers out of billions of $$$$$!!!!!!
Since Fukushima, the German Greens have said nothing about the environment. A little bit of Eurozone-Anti Bank Bailout-class warfare rethoric and some multicultural noises but nothing about the environment.
Rumor has it that Bosch also wants to unload its Solar business. They acquired Ersol in 2007 or so, and last year the inverter business of Conergy. Now it looks like full steam backwards.
…This has got to be one of the biggest scams of all time…
Almost. I think that if we compare the prices the Dutch tulip bulb bubble was a bigger scam as a greater percentage of GDP was involved.
Granted, this one conned the whole world and not just one nation, so it must be the biggest global scam ever.
Being able to say “we told you so” doesn’t make me feel better. Well, not a lot better anyway, but still here goes – We told you so!
How do I get a call through to that fancy yacht? Or to the politician that voted for such things? Right, I can’t.
‘the Dutch tulip bulb bubble was a bigger scam as a greater percentage of GDP was involved.’ It is sometimes said that the Dutch invented capatalism. The value of the tulip bulb was based on trust as is the value of paper money. As long as you can trust that your bulb or sheet of paper can be commercially used, there is no problem but the value of the bulb was nor guaranteed by government. Green products, tulip bulbs, and paper money need trust as they do not have intrinsic value. It is one of the reasons why the climate hoax is that stubborn. The other reason is that scientists and politicians cannot admit that their careers are based on a worthless product. It’s almost the same story.
Unlike complex and easily hidden figures on the climate, solar and the even less effective wind turbines have directly measurable costs and outputs, and anyone who actually owns solar panels and has the required maths degree to figure out the amount of power they actually produce from the general mix they provide in addition to they do almost nothing. Short of using something either explosive or focus the sun so narrowly they would melt the diffuse sunlight is not capable of producing a change in any known chemical (and toxic to boot) cocktail sufficient to power more than a calculator at a constant rate (as they work in artificial light, ie using power to power them, a totally redundant method indoors).
Instead they were used as a pyramid scheme to use a front to move money along the chain, where the products themselves are only there to attract new members and look impressive, and bought not for any actual function but the promised (through our taxes) returns. And using no more than logic the most power is needed at night, when they do nothing by definition, and storage albeit possible is not currently economical and unlikely ever to be. Of course governments and companies have redistributed the wealth to greedy citizens cashing in on the feed in tariffs to their equally greedy suppliers from everyone else who lives in the country and pays taxes. A simple equation (ie hundreds of times simpler than teasing the contribution of panels to an annual power supply) removing the feed in tariffs from the total will put the owners at a loss, and the more complex power calculations will show them paying roughly the amount for their normal power for powering their TV or if lucky microwave for an hour or so a day. But as they are getting the money the power is not either relevant or even known by the users.
The only way of course they will know is when all they have is renewables, solar presumably costing more than the house alone, and further trying to use them to run a hospital. You only need to run the experiment about ten minutes and hopefully only kill a very small number of people before it’s over.
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