{"id":3190,"date":"2013-04-26T10:50:10","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T14:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=3190"},"modified":"2013-06-06T11:27:05","modified_gmt":"2013-06-06T15:27:05","slug":"solar-shakeout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/solar-shakeout.html","title":{"rendered":"Solar shakeout"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nSolar companies are shaking out just like car and computer companies before them.\r\nDozens of automobile manufacturers shook out to a handful of major ones;\r\nTesla is the first new one in decades.\r\nSo many computer hardware and software companies went under or were bought\r\nby bigger ones that it would take a very long blog post to list them all;\r\nI could name a dozen or two off the top of my head.\r\nThere’s a shakeout going on right now among mobile phone manufacturers:\r\neven mighty Nokia is sinking.\r\nThe solar industry is going through that same normal shakeout phase.\r\nWill electric utilities be next?\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nStephen Lacey wrote for greentechsolar 23 April 2013,\r\n\r\nFour Must-See Charts on the Future of the Global Solar Market:\r\nWho will be left standing when the dust settles?<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIn 2009, after Spain’s market collapsed and the world faced a\r\ncrippling financial crisis, GTM Research predicted a shake-out in\r\nthe manufacturing sector. But unexpected growth in global demand,\r\nparticularly in European markets, helped keep many producers afloat.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThen, in 2010 and 2011, we saw a surge of new manufacturing capacity\r\n— much of it driven by China — that created the\r\nstructural oversupply faced by the industry today. As illustrated by\r\nthe growing list of deceased solar companies and acquisitions, the\r\ndelayed shake-out in the industry is now well underway.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThis morning at the GTM Solar Summit, Shayle Kann, vice president of\r\nresearch, shared his outlook on consolidation, module prices, and\r\nthe shifting global demand through 2016. Here are four charts from\r\nhis presentation that provide a glimpse of what the world may look\r\nlike in the next three years.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nIn 2010, when the period of irrational growth began in solar\r\nmanufacturing, there were 357 active module producers.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBy the end of this year, that number will be down to 145. And in\r\n2016, it will drop below 100. (So if you’re at a conference talking\r\nto a person involved in manufacturing, there’s a good chance he or\r\nshe might be out of a job or working for a different firm the next\r\ntime you see them.)\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nHe then predicts that solar PV panel prices may actually rise\r\nbriefly due to fewer manufacturers.\r\nHowever, as he notes, demand will keep going up.\r\nAnd demand combined with economies of scale may make prices continue down\r\nwith\r\n\r\nMoore’s Law<\/a>.\r\nI think his installed capacity graph is way too conservative,\r\nbecause he doesn’t go back far enough, which would reveal that\r\n2010 growth is not an anomaly, it’s\r\n\r\na steady continuation<\/a> of the\r\nprevious decade (well, except in Georgia<\/a>).\r\nWe shall see what happens in the next few years.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nOne thing’s for certain:\r\na few bankruptcies are not a problem for the world’s fastest-growing\r\nindustry.\r\nThey are merely a symptom of any industry growing that fast.\r\nSolar panels will continue to spread, ever-faster,\r\nand\r\n\r\nelectric utilities need to adapt<\/a>\r\nor soon their big utility shakeout will start, too.\r\nThe utility shakeout may look more like an increase<\/em>\r\nin companies, as many solar installers and vendors move in to\r\nhandle distributed solar power\r\n\r\nif the incumbents won’t do it<\/a>.\r\nThat’s my speculation, and again we’ll see.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Solar companies are shaking out just like car and computer companies before them. Dozens of automobile manufacturers shook out to a handful of major ones; Tesla is the first new one in decades. So many computer hardware and software companies went under or were bought by bigger ones that it would take a very long […]","protected":false},"author":3,"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":[14,18,21,23,24],"tags":[31,1132,2483,8704,8701,8709,8702,12,7,25,29,8714,2045,2484,6,1030],"class_list":["post-3190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-georgia-power","category-planning","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","tag-automobile","tag-computer","tag-demand","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-history","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-moores-law","tag-price","tag-solar","tag-solar-pv","tag-supply","tag-valdosta","tag-watts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-Ps","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3190","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3190"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3880,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3190\/revisions\/3880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}