\nKevin Bullis wrote in MIT Technology Review today,\n\n \nFive years ago only one of the 10 largest solar cell producers was based\nin China. But by last year, four of the top five were based there, and\neach is growing fast: all four doubled their production last year. It’s\nwidely believed that this success is due to low labor costs, but Stuart\nWenham, CTO of the largest solar cell maker in China, Suntech Power,\nargues that the real causes are advances in manufacturing technology\nthat have improved solar cells’ performance and cut costs.\n<\/blockquote>\nHow about this part:\n\n\n \n \n \n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here in south Georgia we don’t even need to innovate manufacturing, we merely need to implement. Yet Georgia’s solar manufacturers Suniva and MAGE SOLAR are innovating. And we can innovate in deployment. Kevin Bullis wrote in MIT Technology Review today, Chinese Solar Companies Thrive on Manufacturing Innovations: Suntech Power’s CTO argues that the secret to […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,2044,23,24],"tags":[8704,1164,8701,8849,1712,7,8714,215,4152,4151,6],"class_list":["post-1797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-georgia-solar-power","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","tag-economy","tag-finance","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-solar-power","tag-innovation","tag-lowndes-county","tag-solar","tag-south-georgia","tag-stp","tag-suntech","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-sZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/files\/65875\/pluto_x220.jpg\")
<\/a>\nChinese Solar Companies Thrive on Manufacturing Innovations<\/a>:\n\nSuntech Power’s CTO argues that the secret to China’s success is not\ncheap labor but advanced equipment for making solar cells.\n
\nWenham says the top Chinese companies have been particularly good at\nidentifying promising technologies\u2014often concepts and prototypes that\nhave been languishing in labs for decades\u2014and finding ways to produce\nthem at a large scale.\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd all we have to do is to deploy solar at large scale.\n
\nWenham says that knowledge and experience in manufacturing were crucial\nto developing such advances. At UNSW, he explains, the researchers would\nuse this “horribly sophisticated process,” including photolithography,\nvacuum deposition of “quite exotic metals,” and “all sorts of chemical\nprocesses,” to deposit the narrow metal contacts required for achieving\nhigh efficiencies. Suntech researchers, who were closely familiar with\nthe needs of manufacturing, “came up with a simple, low-cost way to\nreplace all of that while achieving the same results,” he says.\n<\/blockquote>\nHow about we come up with some south Georgia low-tech ways of deploying\nthis stuff?\n\n
![](\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3464\/3209894478_7b76b1c315_m.jpg\")
<\/a>\nFor example, I heard from its CEO that\n\nGeorgia Solar Power<\/a> now can clip solar panels\ndirectly to the seams in corrugated steel roofing, with no need\nto puncture the roof.\nLet’s find easy ways to put them on parking lots, road medians, sidewalks,\nbarns, buildings, and back yards!\n\nNot all the manufacturing changes Chinese companies have made have\nimproved the product\u2014in some cases, cost reductions have produced\nproducts that don’t last as long or perform as well as solar cells made\nelsewhere, says Travis Bradford, a solar industry analyst. But the\nChinese companies also have other, nontechnical advantages that have\nallowed them to succeed.\n<\/blockquote>\nWho’s going to step up in south Georgia and\n\nfinance solar?<\/a>\n