I have almost 5kw of panels and a 5kw inverter. If solar panels get cheaper than dirt, will future 5kw inverters allow 10 kw of panels, so that the power vs time graph is a wide "plateau" instead of a thin "hill"?
The ratio of DC panel wattage to AC inverter wattage is called the inverter loading ratio, and it has been creeping up over time in utility scale solar farms. The reasoning is indeed to give more of a plateau shape to AC output (which is limited by transmission line capacity) and to perform more steadily under hazy or partly cloudy conditions. In theory, this ratio could go up a lot if panel prices continue to decline faster than inverter prices.
In practice, inverters probably also need partial redesign for a high loading ratio. Higher ILRs in large solar farms has appeared to contribute to faster inverter failures in recent years.
The problem is that there is no standard for house-scale DC power. It has to be higher voltage than 12V or 48V that are used off-grid. There are no standard plugs or sockets, and it has to be different than AC.
The big problem is that everyone has AC sockets, and it isn't worth the trouble to switch. It is going to be huge expense to buy new appliances for potential small efficiency gain. The in-wall voltage is going to mean that need adapters for other DC uses.
A better approach is to have a standard for DC power between AC side, batteries, and solar panels. Then have a single big inverter between AC and DC. It also makes possible to have DC-only in places like cabins that aren't connected to the grid.
Finally, many houses and apartments can't add batteries or solar panel. Not everyone has space like a basement. Like there is efficiency advantage like with utility solar, it might make sense to put batteries in substations where can use containers.
Low-power 12V or 24V DC is very doable around the house, for small-scale LED lighting, etc. But if you limit yourself to small connectors and thus reasonably low currents (like 10A, as I did), it's 120W or 240W per connector at the very top.
Serious power, in the kilowatt range, would require much higher voltage, and still much bulkier connectors and thicker conductors. OTOH 400V DC should be comparable in this regard with 220V AC, which has a 380V amplitude. The 400V DC standard is relatively widespread and well-supported by existing industrial equipment. Connectors are comparable in size to the (grounded) Euro plugs.
Certain things get a lot more complicated when you go from AC to DC. Two of the most significant issues for home use are connects that can be disconnected under load (arcing is a serious issue here) and turning DC power on/off with mechanical switches (arcing is also the issue here).
Industrial DC devices get around these issues with stricter rules and bulkier/more complex devices. E.g. electric cars use contactors to connect batteries rather than a simpler relay/switch.
But the standard clearance for air gaps is 1 mm / kV, and arching distance is below 0.4 mm / kV. More advanced and faster mechanical switches should work fine at 400V DC.
Also IGBTs may be a preferred way, especially with various smart switches.
Sockets and plugs seem to be the hardest part to make cheap and reliable. But industrial solutions can likely be adapted.
I have no idea what the average household load looks like.
I could imagine a scenario where every outlet also has a USB port. It could run your laptop and your lights. Obviously it can't run a fridge or a stove; maybe future fridges would run off the same current as the stove?
What I'm most unclear on is the middle range. I know you can't run a hair dryer or microwave that way. What about a food processor? Maybe a toaster?
I'm trying to figure out how much that middle range makes this a deal breaker.
Yeah I feel like this is very tractable problem. Most of my stuff runs on USB-C anyways, I just need USB power outlets everywhere. My lights, motor blinds, bathroom fans can run on POE, including data.
My oven should already have its own battery installed, or a capacitor bank for very fast preheat.
My fridge can do the same. It’s rarely actually compressing.
I’m mostly just trying to avoid needing to buy very expensive inverters.
USB is too low a voltage to be useful. You will always need an adaptor to get from mains voltage to something useful for devices. There is nothing wrong with AC for mains, and the ease of transformers is not to be ignored.
Current voltage AC is still ideal for powering a house '
i could easily see USB 4 Power Delivery Extend Power Delivery and its successor become a de-facto standard. Many electrical outlets are already coming with usb ports nect to standard AC outlets. once that becomes standard on all new outlets you will see many more devices take advantage of that using USB for power then. after that you will see more demand for even higher voltage in future versions of the USB standard. once it reaches a tipping point it will make since to run DC throughout houses and instead of converting from AC to DC for the USB ports it will be reversed converting to ac for the legacy outlet next to the USB power ports
USB-C might be that DC standard. It is easy to install aftermarket AC outlet modules with an embedded transformer feeding a pair of DC sockets. One could easily imagine a house wired with such USB power outlets, lacking the AC sockets - they'd presumably be supplied by buck converters from some higher bus voltage, likely 48v.
There are outlets with USB-A and USB-C ports. I don’t think there are any with USB-PD because chips are expensive for that. It would be possible to have multiple ports and no AC ports.
But problem is places with lots of devices, then would need power strip and might as well use AC one.
The problem is appliances that draw too much power for USB-C. They also draw too much power for 48V DC. There isn’t any advantage to switching the wall voltage.
> I don’t think there are any with USB-PD because chips are expensive for that.
Leviton makes a 60W unit now that supports PD. Be warned it's a little janky in that it tries to be "smart" and re-negotiate (well, outright drop to 5V) the port if your device stops drawing substantially less current than requested. This can confuse some devices - especially those without batteries. Otherwise I can say the 20V/3A profile works fine on my macbook.
I installed a few outlets last year which claimed to offer USB-PD at 18 watts. They were certainly more expensive than any other kind of receptacle, but not so much that I remember what I spent on them.
I don't think anyone would switch the wall voltage altogether; not in one generation, at least. But a majority of the devices we plug into AC outlets these days convert that power to DC before doing anything with it, and a majority of those devices do so using USB; so one could imagine that a house which had solar panels and batteries could also have DC power wiring and dedicated USB-PD receptacles, skipping the inverter and all the rectifiers.
The majority of devices might be USB powered, but the majority of energy use is from large AC appliances. USB is solved by adapter or special outlets.
Also, the DC voltage for house wires and batteries need to be much higher than USB voltage so will need conversion. Might as well have it be AC to DC converter.
There is a problem connecting solar panels to batteries and needing two inverters. But that could be solved with higher voltage DC between them.
A 48V dc circuit over a 12 AWG wire would provide less than 1/2 the wattage (power) available in a typical 120V AC circuit. You’re still going to need some circuits that can deliver 1500W to power appliances, space heaters, window AC, etc.
Extremely amusing to see that the war of the currents is back on, between cheap solar panels and the advent of high-voltage DC power transmission. Edison might still get the last laugh.
Been tossing around the idea of Poe Eth to 100w usb-c wall ports. I'd love to see more Poe DC gear. In aus we have laws where if it's <100v and x amperage you don't need a license to work on it. Would make rolling out a house or shop install/fitout able to be done using regular labourers not expensive sparkies.
Hell sneak some data in and you have smart control of all these connected usb-c cabled devices too. Make for game changing smart home rollout.
Gimme lamps, lights, speakers, fans, window motors, TVs all on usb-c power plus data pls.
Power over Ethernet can't do 100W. The 802.3bt supports 51W (Type 3) or 71W (Type 2). PoE uses pretty small currents, Type 4 is 960mA.
Also, PoE does have significant loss over longer distances. It isn't a problem with low power devices but would be a huge issue for higher power. It is almost certainly more efficient to send power as 120V AC and convert to USB-C.
The alternative is outlets with USB-C ports, or power strips with USB-C.
Places that use 12V/48V DC have much thicker cables. They also have shorter lengths on RV, boat, or cabin.
I think if there was large scale adoption of PoE to power stuff outside of network equipment the regs would eventually catch up and it would have similar requirements line voltage wiring. 100W is more than enough to start a fire. 100W at 100V is enough to kill someone. There just aren’t as many regs because it’s new and not widely used. Building codes and standards are written in blood. One an apartment burns down because a bad RJ-45 connector started a fire the codes will catch up.
> In aus we have laws where if it's <100v and x amperage you don't need a license to work on it
You're the first other person I've seen to point this out. Better even is negotiated power means normally the wire would only deliver 15W which isn't going to burn down anything.
I'm also seeing more and more cordless appliances. A cordless vacuum doesn't need much power when charging.
What’s the advantage of DC? You presumably still need to step down from high voltage or you end up with expensive thick wiring to avoid resistive losses.
I'm just talking about DC inside the home. To the meter it should still be AC, then pushed into a battery bank. The house should only use the battery bank (i.e. different battery packs that are dedicated for different parts of the house - like the breaker box - the battery packs exchange power between each other and the grid as needed.
This way DC -> DC fast charging could be a thing, also my DC -> DC oven could pull a lot more Amps and pre-heat very quickly.
Inputs:
- Solar Panels -> Battery Bank
- Grid <-Inverter-> Battery Bank
Outputs:
- Battery Bank -> Washing Machine
- Battery Bank -> Lights
- Battery Bank -> Induction Stove
- Battery Bank -> USC-C to charge devices (my devices could charge so fast!)
Why do you think DC to DC fast charging will be better than AC to DC fast charging? Both involve voltage conversion and the conversion has about the same efficiency. The one advantage is that could choose higher DC voltage, like 480V, and send more power on same wires. But that won't get you DC fast charging, will still take a couple hours to charge.
A lot of the things you are talking about will require conversion. LEDs will still need conversion from line voltage. Any incandescent lights will need AC conversion. The USB-C adapter will still exist, and there would no effect on charging speeds.
You can get most of the benefit by having DC power cables between the battery, solar panels, and inverter.
Most certainly DC to DC is faster. It is only limited by the local infrastructure. i.e. want to charge faster? own a bigger / better battery bank, with bigger charging cables and a better car.
DC -> DC (with some PWM / battery management) can also be slowed down (or use reduced amps) to best suit the moment. So if versatility is better, then DC to DC is again "better".
This is the scaled up equivalent of an external laptop AC/DC power brick. It’s faster because it’s supplying much, much more power. Multiple homes worth.
Batteries need DC to charge and putting the transformer in the external fast charger means the one in the car itself only needs to be sized for lower power domestic charging.
I think you’re underestimating the resistive losses at lower voltage. For the same amount of power (volts x amps) resistive losses are inverse square to the voltage so losses are 100x greater at 10V x 10A than at 100V x 1A.
Resistance is inverse to the cross sectional area of the wire so to compensate you need thicker wire, 10x the diameter (100x the area) for 1/10th the voltage x 10x the current. That’s why the wire that connects to your car battery is so much thicker than the mains wire in your home.
You could have high voltage DC in your home but then you still need the transformer so I’m not sure it really buys you anything.
Have you ever had an issue with the resistive losses in your long ethernet cords?
If you're prefer you can think of it as: each room gets its own Tesla powerwall, and therefore the battery to wall socket resistive losses are negligible.
Power over Ethernet usually supplies milliamps of current. Resistive losses are proportional to the square of the amps so they’re not a big problem for most things you power over PoE.
For the same power draw, losses are 4x as high as at 110V, and 16x as high as at 220V. DC/DC power adapters are more efficient at low power (a few watts), so PoE might conceivably be marginal efficiency win for powering a bunch of low power VoIP phones. But as soon as you want to do something like power a laptop or even fast charge a mobile phone, you’re going to be better off plugging it into the mains with a modern AC/DC adapter that can be 95% efficient.
It’s not that AC is better than DC, it’s that higher voltages are far more efficient than lower voltages as soon as you need even moderate amounts of power over moderate distances.
100V doesn't cut it, we need them to work off USB-C. The current generation of appliances is a bit too old, and should soon be phased out. It has already begun, but the next generation of appliances all have built in battery and capacitor banks. Batteries are trickle charged through USB-C (i.e. like phones and laptops).
e.g. cordless vacuums / lawn equipment with swappable batteries.
e.g. water proof electric shavers, toothbrushes, blow dryers.
Likely soon induction stoves, air fryers (for instant pre-heat), heat pumps (including the fridge / freezer), blenders, etc. If it can run on USB-C, off the wall cool. If it can't add a battery.
Caveat: Unsubstantiated statements follow. There would be some EMF around the wires. While 60 Hz is probably less detrimental, the harmonics (of higher frequencies) are. The effects are subtle and possibly not obvious for healthy people, but can make a difference with autoimmune issues.
Note most of his experiments correspond to radio waves ( WiFi, AM FM etc). But I see no reason to not extend the concept to 50/60Hz and resulting harmonics.
Anything with a motor will get a lot more expensive. AC motors are dirt cheap.
Also safety is harder on DC. For one the relays must be made much larger to withstand the nasty arcing. Arc extinguishing is much harder too.
Efficiency is a toss up. On one hand, rectifiers are very efficient and you could get by with one rectifier instead of many. On the other, they're not 100% efficient and the voltages are much lower -> more copper.
Reliability wont be as good. Rectifiers go all the time (think PC's CPU), there's no comparable failure component in the AC home.
Overall the idea has merit, mainly because the most home loads are DC nowadays anyway. But your AC, washer, fridge, garage opener, pool pump, furnace blower, refrigerator, dryer and dishwasher will not be pleased.
I agree on more DC appliances. Can't really escape having a failure-prone component in the mix though. For utility-scale you still need AC for transmission. For small-scale you need a switching regulator to even out the output voltage.
I wonder what kind of onsite loads they could have to use extra capacity? Is there any high power industrial process doesn't require too much space, setup cost, or transport infrastructure for materials in and out, and can run when there's sun available?
That website--1990s text-only style--is a strong statement. I am not sure if it's a statement that "we're going to take over the world, get on board now" or "in hindsight, we'll say we should have spent more on marketing," but it does get one's attention.
> "Why does our website look like this? At TI we believe we can change the world by displacing fossil hydrocarbon production at global scale. Like our website, our machines are simple so we can build millions of them as quickly as possible. Our website embodies our cultural commitment to allocating resources where they solve the most important problems."
I thought it was about not wasting bytes on unnecessary stuff, but do they load shittons of JS extra marketing tracking analytics or not is the real question.
Carbon capture is just like plastic recycling, it doesn't actually work at scale and it would be best to just not produce that much carbon in the first place. We should only be using as little fossil fuels as possible to replace the grid with clean/nuclear power and batteries.
You can essentially already do that. I live in a place basking with sun most of the year, and have 22k of panels with a 15kw inverter (max allowed before being considered commercial). My production is a wide hill with a considerable plateau, thanks to the amount of panels (as an example, produced 140kwh yesterday). It is clearly not economically viable for most regions, but for us it luckily is
Even more important, if you're on batteries as opposed to grid-tied, your battery costs can go down significantly. Since the worst days of the year tend to be winter and overcast, if you can install enough capacity to still generate a significant fraction of your needs on those days (eg at 10% of summer peak) the size of the required batteries can be much smaller.
It doesn't work so well in the north east, but if weather is only bad for a few days, you might need much less backup or generator power. Batteries and generator power tends to be much less than adding excess solar.
There's no conditional on solar panel pricing -- you can do this now.
I have 12kW of panels, and a 10kW inverter. I get a nice 10kW flat-line for a few hours each day through summer, and a better-than-it-would-otherwise-be return through winter (though never reaching max).
Only if the microinverter has multiple ports for multiple panels. I'm not aware of a microinverter in which you can plug in multiple panels in parallel.
Additionally: microinverters can support higher voltages, so you can just hook them up in series. It's also possible to use an adapter to hook them up in parallel.
> will future 5kw inverters allow 10 kw of panels, so that the power vs time graph is a wide "plateau" instead of a thin "hill"?
Inverters already allow a substantial amount of undersizing, e.g. I'm using a 10 kW Fronius inverter with 14.5 kW of panels installed. This does lead to the plateau you are looking after so if that is something you want, go for it In my case the 10 kW inverter just happened to be the biggest one available in this series (GEN24 Symo, a 3-phase hybrid inverter using high-voltage batteries (which I have yet to install, waiting for prices to come down and my 5 year sell-back contract to expire)). I would have been fine with a "thin hill" instead of the wide plateau we get now since that hill would stand on top of the plateau, maximising production.
If you're not putting it into the grid you can do whatever ratio. Have 20KW (or whatever) of panels, a suitably sized charge controller, a bunch of batteries, and an inverter sized for whatever max AC current draw you need. Or if you can run everything you need DC, skip the inverter altogether.
> As the cumulative installed capacity increased, the price of solar declined exponentially. Solar technology is a prime example. For more than four decades, the price of solar panels declined by 20% with each doubling of global cumulative capacity.
Some of this is related to China's apparent mastery of monocrystalline silicon PV technology. The article and the graph don't distinguish panels by mono vs poly but for non-thin-tech panels, monocrystalline is preferable. See (2018):
> "When potential expansions from other mono ingot and wafer makers are factored in, this points to a tectonic shift in the supply of monocrystalline silicon which threatens to reconfigure the entire upstream solar landscape and potentially push monocrystalline silicon solar into a dominant market position in much shorter timeframe than previously anticipated."
Hmm interesting, suggests that solar panel prices should drop to like 8c/W by 2030. At that point they are pretty much free because the ROI will be so high.
Panel cost is probably 10-20% of a total install cost. What you're paying for is labour, inverter, cabling and metal mounting equipment. Mostly labour. If you're able to self install you can shave years off ROI.
I got my equipment through a local wholesaler. I built a BOM using solardesigntool and submitted through them. The wholesaler called me and accommodated me as a DIYer. CED Greentech was the company.
But presumably it’s cheaper for the average HN reader to hire a skilled tradesman to do the install than to take the, say, 2% chance of a debilitating fall from the roof?
The article talks about modules at $0.17/watt, or $17 per 100 watts. The DIY prices for modules I see are around $1 per watt, and have been for a long time.
Just got a quote last week (US east coast, mid-atlantic region) for $2.07/W DC with a 1.26 DC/AC ratio (9.6KW panels, 7.6KW string inverter). After 30% tax credit that’s $1.45/W, which might finally push me over the edge to install. My previous quote last year was about $2.36/W and in 2017 was about $2.85/W. So installed prices are definitely going down, at least in some parts of the country.
Local solar installer in the Raleigh, NC area: https://8msolar.com. I don't think they service anywhere outside of central NC. I was trying to be a bit generic on the region but turns out mid-atlantic (by most definitions) technically stops at Virginia, my mistake.
I am trying to figure when solar panels will have a lower LCOE than just a steam turbine alone. At that point even absolutely free fusion would have a hard time competing with solar for half the day.
This past spring break we drove through a lot of the back country of Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. There is an unbelievable amount of flat desert land that would be perfect for solar. We drove at highway speeds for hours without seeing anyone or anything else.
I don't see this being an issue. The reason I consider fusion important is so that we can have a total production that is several orders of magnitude greater than the current needs. Also for space when too far away from the sun.
I was just musing about the economics. Ultra-cheap solar drives steam turbine based competitors to have only about 50% utilization. I am not sure what that will do to the overall market.
Rather sad to me that none of these price drops seem to trickle down. Hurray for more solar farms but it would nice if the price of a backpack solar panel was a dollar less than it was a decade ago.
I don't remember what the price was a decade ago, but something like a 60W folding panel these days often goes on sale for really cheap, like, under $2 a watt.
The backpacks with built in panels are still expensive because I'm guessing it's hard to find customers who want to be in direct sunlight long enough to get significant charge, while carrying a backpack.
Regardless of whether wages match inflation completely or how long they take to do so, the fact is that if solar panels cost the same in dollars as they did 10 years ago, the average person's wage buys more of them.
You could counter-argue that other things gone up by so much that despite this, people have less money to spare for solar panels. But given that solar panels are competing with some of those things, importantly fossil fuels, it's still important to be clear that they are getting cheaper - as the trend continues a solar panel pays for itself more and more quickly.
Living in S.A and our decade long power crisis it is rather noticable to see solar panels now appearing on homes and office parks.
I got 3.7Kw panels, 5Kw inverter and 10Kw battery - only our stove is not on the PV circuit - water heater is already solar based (not PV) and it has been brought some measure of sanity back to our lives.
The worst outages was 6 hours daily.
Should have done this a long time ago but it is now helped by banks tailoring financing packages for such installs.
My biggest use of electricity is my laptop and monitor.
Any ideas on a portable solar panel that could power those during the summer?
Portable because I rent and can’t fix anything down, it doesn’t have to fit in a backpack or anything like that.
That’s…really surprising? A ceiling fan uses about 75W a hour. A MacBook Pro has a 100 Wh battery and last about 4 hours so 25W per hour. Your laptop and monitor should be lower than any other appliance.
That being said, there’s a lot of options nowadays which is exciting! For instance, you could have a 200W port panel and a 1kWh battery system from eco flow that should run both with room to spare. Anker has a new system meant for patios but it’s only for Europe.
I run my MacBook Pro off of the usbc pd port on my cheap ($130, 300wh) lifepo4 battery box. I got 2, plug one directly into a 100w solar panel, other powers the computer and monitor. Swap daily.
If you want to run a line into your house you can get by with one, or just get a panel with a usbc pd output.
Yeah, it’s gets a bit murky to stick with power or energy even though Wh isn’t SI. But it’s usually pretty important to keep the time component when it comes to describing an energy storage system.
They are both energy. Watts are Joules/seconds so if you're dividing by time and then multiplying by time (an hour in this case) they obviously cancel out and you end up back with just Joules.
Portable panels are almost never used in a way such that the carbon emissions it took to make them are offset. Things like how many hours they are used, poor exposure and curtailment from the use of batteries all slash the useful electricity they produce.
For almost all people they are only appropriate when you are off-grid.
Seems like the easy solution is one of those solar systems marketed as being for camping, right? Not sure it's economical, but easy.
Personally I'm interested in a DIY mod to add solar panels directly to the back of a laptop screen. It probably wouldn't be able to actually charge unless the machine is in sleep mode (which also would have the lid closed which would help), but it would extend the battery - if the machine averages 10W and the panel gives 1W, that's an extra 10% runtime for free, and better if it sleeps in the middle (which works, because I'm unlikely to use a laptop continuously for 10 hours).
Ecoflow and others do battery and invertors with solar connectors for such a system. Much of their range allows up to 800W of solar panels and all in would be about $1500 total with 2 panels and that gives you 2KWh or so of battery storage. Your typical usage for a high end monitor is maybe 130W and laptops vary but almost certainly below 100W typically.
Something like this https://youtu.be/UnTJScmSLYs
Eco flow can charge from solar, then charge a few appliances. I think Anker just released a similar product.
How comfortable are you with DIY electrics? Can you lay out a panel somewhere in the sun? Do you want it to run at night? Do you want it to automatically switch to grid power if needed?
The Yuan has roughly been pegged to the dollar @ ~7Y/$ for the last few years, but it rose (falling ratio) during the pandemic and it has been falling a lot (rising ratio) recently.
I'd be a bit cautious about using GDP PPP in isolation.
It's a good metric for a rough comparison/transformation, but has relatively weak prediction power. That said, the same holds for any economic metric used in isolation (eg. HDI, GDP, GDP Per Capita, GDP Growth Rate, GDP PPP Per Capita, Debt Rate, Median Income, etc.)
All metrics need to used together to gain a holistic view on economic development. It's the equivalent of driving and only concentrating on the odometer at the expense of the fuel gauge, speedometer, and tachometer.
Well, in this case we are talking about the Photovoltaic Sector within the PRC.
This implies that this is a microeconomics problem, not a macroeconomic one. This means that metrics like GDP PPP, HDI, etc are completely useless when investigating a subsegment of industrial production.
If I was analyzing the Photovoltaic sector, I'd probably look at
1. Current TAM, Future TAM, TAM growth rate (both past and present)
2. The price of the inputs used (wafers, polysilicon, cells, modules, labor, R&D, tariffs, subsidies)
3. The growth of comparable manufacturers globally
4. Adjacent markets/segments (if I am specialized in solar wafer manufacturing tools, can I potentially pivot into tools for IC wafer manufacturing)
This is a non-comprehensive list, but in general I'm not surprised with a collapse in the price of Photovoltaic Cells.
This was kind of the whole point globally of spearheading the industry - it helped build domain experience or subsidize the adjacent semiconductors sector as well as helped countries like the PRC and the US pivot away from foreign ONG dependency, and is why countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, and India also invest heavily in the sector.
That could be simply a function of having a lot of room for growth. I personally think their growth is not sustainable once they achieve ~US levels of PPP per capita.
It's super debatable if they can reach US levels of GDP PPP per capita.
The US is at 80k, Germany is at 66k, Canada is at 60k, South Korea is at 56k, Romania is at 41k. China is at 23k.
If Germany or South Korea can't reach the US, China getting there seems incredibly hard.
Though if China reaches Romania's level (funny when presented this way :-) ), the nominal total GDP of China will probably be 1.5 - 2x the US one, just by virtue of them having 5x the number of people compared the US.
It's the natural progression of anything in this universe. Even people.
Your rate of physical growth between the ages of 2 and 22 was enormous. Your rate of physical growth between the ages of 22 and 42 was likely minimal. (Unless you grew, um, laterally.)
A 22 year old should not be comparing himself to a 2 year old and lamenting that he can't match the 2 year old's growth rate.
China’s PPP is weird. It isn’t apples to apples, it is Chinese living standard to American living standard. Many things in China are actually more expensive than the USA, what is cheaper is generally related to food and services, otherwise you just go with cheaper alternatives in China instead, and they are cheaper for a reason. Housing is a good example: you aren’t going to fund the same standard f housing in China for cheaper than the USA, but you can find cheaper housing (I.e. not as nice as you would rent in the states). Cars are another good example: they have cheap cars, but if you want to buy say a Camry in china, you’ll pay more than you would in the USA (and we aren’t even talking imports, they are made in Chinese factories at a lesser quality standard than the USA or Japan).
Meanwhile, China's solar industry is in rapid decline, dropping 40% in market cap y/y, due to overcapacity, falling price margins, bans on goods from China's Xinjiang region, and increased non-Chinese solar growth - US's solar industry seem to be on the rise. China's solar industry should follow similar trends as its electronics industry, with massive pullout of factories to other countries, and eventually only mostly servicing China's internal markets.
At least in the US market there isn't a single category of a thing in any walmart that you can only buy exclusively at walmart. If this was their strategy they would still be price cutting.
There are a lot of companies that produce what amounts to the "Walmart line" - basically a cheap version of their normal products. Sure, their products are sold elsewhere, but never for as cheap as Walmart.
Plus, Walmart has pretty terrible payment terms. Suppliers hand over the product, and maybe Walmart pays them for it in a year.
Walmart is too large to ignore, but too cut-throat to survive exclusively on.
But Walmart isn't the only company like this. The entire domestic auto industry operates like this (supplier costs are known to the fraction of a cent, and manufactures know exactly what margin to give in order to keep them around, but just barely), as is Apple.
right, my point isn't that they aren't cheap or cheaper. My point is that if the strategy of price cutting until you have zero competition even works, walmart isn't employing such a tactic because everything they sell has alternatives at some other store, which means they have not price cut to the point of eliminating competition.
China's PPP should reduce in half this year. It has seen massive layoffs from every industry (average 22% decline in revenue across all industries). It has seen 50% reduction in wages, even in stable positions like government offices. It has seen unpaid wages for anywhere from a few months up to a year!!
This is reinforced by 50% in price cuts in real estate listings in tier 1 cities, 10X increase in real estate inventory this year, and 90% physical retail decline
Huh? Even the most bearish projections about Chinese economic growth are at about 3% per year. For PPP to actually halve you'd have to actually see a recession comparable to the Great Depression, the Peso Crisis in the 90s, or the 2015 EU+US sanctions in Russia.
China IS in a Great Depression. The government is making the numbers seem a little bit better, but with 21% official youth unemployment rate - definitely higher since netizens have found that only 20% of this year's graduate has secured jobs, and 50% - 70% reduction in real estate listing prices, when real estate is 30% of China's economy and how local governments mostly gets funded, we will see retroactively that China entered its Great Depression in 2022.
Chinese youth unemployment in 2023 is roughly comparable to the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) in the 2010s. Those countries still held around a 2-3% GDP growth rate.
Also, the bearish 2-3% growth rate estimation was derived independently of the PRC government - it was reached by both Blackstone and the IMF.
None of this is to say there isn't an economic malaise/recession in the PRC circa 2023, but honestly it's playing out the same way a similar growth slowdown happened in Mexico, Türkiye, South Korea, Thailand, and Brazil in the 2000s when those countries hit similar economic metrics to China in the early 2020s.
1.) China's unemployment rate is no where near comparable to europe's. China considers one employed if one has worked at least ONE hour a week. or if their family have land to farm.
2.) There's nothing comparable to what's happening to China right now, except for the Russia sanctions, where an entire economic engine (export, 25% of GDP) is being ripped out or shut down, by companies pulling factories out of China
3.) Blackstone and IMF have been plenty wrong before. also, there's no chance they don't at least use some part of the data from the Chinese's National office of statistics.
The PRC is absolutely in a recession. No one is arguing against that, but to say a recession will lead to a 50% collapse in GDP is absolutely ludicrous.
The only middle income countries that have seen such a dramatic collapse in GDP are those in an active state of war like Ukraine, Syria, or Lebanon.
Property values are something like 70% of China's wealth, but only 30% of production. A GDP drop of 15% is very conceivable.
I think it's likely GP is wrong about the 50% figure, but if they were correct the CCP would never publish the number for fear of scaring away foreign investment. So it may be worth looking into more deeply.
You can't have either the US or China in a great depression without it taking everyone down with them. If china is in a great depression, then so is the rest of the world. If china is in a great depression, apple stock would have cratered as would most indices around the world. Go read about the 1929 stock crash. Money front runs economic depressions. Meaning wall street will let us know.
The anti-china nonsense hasn't changed since the early 2000s with gordon chang. China was supposed to collapse decades ago according to the anti-china "experts". Today it's the like of peter zeihan and youtube grifters like serpentza, et al. Same old nonsense - economic collapse, falun gong genocide, organ harvesting, environmental devastation, end of "da ccp". All of that turned out to be outright lies in the 2000s.
My advice is stop watching silly youtube videos by silly grifters and silly news from silly media organizations. Watch the money. If one day, the dow or s&p drops 10% ( even with circuit breakers ), then we may have something. If it continues to drop and stay down, then we may have something. Can't believe the amount of nonsense people believe when it comes to china. Especially when it's the same old debunked nonsense.
At this point I don't know whether people like gordon chang or peter zeihan work for "da USA" or "da CCP". Cause their outlandish bullshit always end up being wrong and making china look good in the end.
Do I seem like a person who has or hasn't dealt with people who spam a list of links before? Also it's not that one person did, it's that all of them did. It was state backed propaganda.
The organ "harvesting" is something that happened in chinese dominant countries. Even in taiwan, which strangely enough didn't get the same "press" coverage. But I'm guessing you already knew that.
Whatever happened to the "death camps" in china with millions of muslims? Did that turn out to be fake as well? We had satelite images and graphic testimony and congress even pass a bill declaring it a genocide. And then magically radio silence. That's exactly what happened back then too.
But then again, we send warships along the chinese coast and accuse them of threatening us.
> If china is in a great depression, then so is the rest of the world
And how did you arrive at this conclusion? US seems fine right now with record low unemployment, strong dollar, and increased factory activities. While detachment from China is already in progress, with China's export slumped 7.5% in May, which is atrocious since that number is compared from a year ago when China was in lockdown. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/07/chinas-exports-plunge-by-7po.... Fact is, the world is moving away from China, and it seems to be doing ok, but China is suffering from double digit decline in real estate/export/retail.
> The anti-china nonsense hasn't changed since the early 2000s with gordon chang
Yes, discount everything logical because of one pundit who is too early. Nevermind most of the business leaders this year have mentioned moving business/factories out of China as a long term plan.
> Watch the money
No, watch all the multinationals pull factories out of China. watch the increasing panic from normal Chinese citizen online video with respect to foreclosure/job loss/unemployment. then watch the money.
It looks like your account has been using HN primarily (exclusively?) for nationalistic/political battle. We ban accounts that do that, regardless of what they're battling for or against. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, so I need to ask you to stop doing this.
It's fine to occasionally post on divisive or political topics as part of a general mix, but we ban accounts when they are primarily used for that, and single-purpose accounts are definitely not ok here. We want curious conversation, which is pretty much the opposite of these things.
Surely we’ll just invest in factories in the Philippines or Mexico and build these things (even more) cheaply there instead? Capitalism is good at finding ways to make a return and if solar panels become profitable money will make it happen. It could turn out to be good if there was a load of unused solar capacity in China rather than the coal they are burning today…
Yes, I was surprised to see screws and industrial fastenings being made in the UK in what looks like really modern highly automated factories. I guess shipping them isn’t worth it.
And all of this cheap PV being produced required burning coal. We've basically outsourced this production, reduced our own coal burning, and then yell at China for increasing its carbon output.
The disaster of the last century is not securing a renewable energy future while squandering the convenient non-renewable energy of fossil fuels on short-term interests.
If you want to shake your fists about fossil fuel emissions this is by far not the appropriate direction to aim them IMO.
coal is a very specific facet of the discussion where the US has targetted coal reductions, and at the same time increasing other fossil fuel based sources. Meanwhile china uses very little oil and gas for electricity production.
For an example of why focusing on one segment does not give you a full picture, china is the world leader in solar, hydro, and wind energy production.
they also use less fossil fuel energy per capita than the united states.
for a more accurate comparison of how clean their power is compared to the united states, i would say a better metric would be that they are 26% renewable while the US is 17% renewable.
I would argue that energy use per capita is not relevant if you're talking about the embedded energy of durable goods shipped across borders.
Similarly, differences in renewable percentages aren't particularly helpful when there is a large disparity in CO2 production by non-renewable type. Coal produces roughly twice as much CO2 per kilowatt hour As Natural Gas. Therefore, if you want to analyze the footprint of a PV panel, the composition of non-renewable fuel types used to manufacture it is very relevant. Something that is manufactured with 20% Renewables and 80% Natural Gas is comparable to something with 60% Renewables and 40% coal.
Comparison would be CO2 per kilowatt hour in China versus the US, which is 40% higher in China, at 530g/kwh vs 370g/kwh in the US. [1]
> if you're talking about the embedded energy of durable goods shipped across borders.
Doesn't counting this as china energy used rather than US energy used mean china's doing even better? That embedded energy should be counted with the consumer, where it naturally shows up on the supplier's energy bill
Then entirely depends on what analysis you're trying to perform and what you want to measure. There is no single right way to do it. It depends on what question you're trying to answer.
My point was very simple. Producing PV panels in China probably makes more CO2 than if you manufactured it in the US.
If you want to change the subject to some other question, the analysis would be different and we would have to know what the question is.
It should be noted that as long as fossil fuels are being burned to make power, what matters is not the embodied CO2 of PV, but how rapidly PV can replace the fossil fueled power sources.
This is also why using nuclear instead for this is such a bad idea: the CO2 emitted by the fossil fueled sources while the nuclear plants are not yet online far outweighs the embodied CO2 of either PV or nuclear construction themselves.
Like I said to the parent poster, it really matters what analysis you're trying to do. If you have decided to buy a PV, you might care about the embedded CO2.
Similarly, if you have a need that PV can't fill, you might want to look at alternative fuel sources with a longer lead time
Actually, I was given to believe elemental silicon is typically made with charcoal, not coal. The porous structure of charcoal reacts more effectively with silicon monoxide vapor in the arc furnace.
Also, that paper had this statement:
> For example, every step in the production of solar PV power systems requires an input of fossil fuels
which is false. None of the steps in making PV require fossil fuels.
That paper appears to not have been published in any peer reviewed journal. Also the claim that wood chips have to come from clearcutting of rain forests is hilarious. Where did you get this bullshit?
Denial? No. It's pointing out that observing that someone uses coal for some part of making PV doesn't imply that making PV requires coal. There is not a single part of the process of making PV modules that would be impossible without coal (or, indeed, without fossil fuels). Processes might have to be changed a bit from right now, but that's true of making just about anything.
