The great solar price illusion

Next month, we will celebrate 21 years in the PV industry and the changes I have been fortunate to witness over more than two decades can only be described as profound. But are we living an illusion? Perhaps.

I presented at All Energy last week and couldn’t help straying from my theme of “What’s happening in Australia” to “Pay careful attention to what’s happening in the global PV manufacturing industry if you are in Australia,” because I am increasingly worried about what’s going on.

I used to work for a (formerly) huge PV manufacturer before I started this company, and over the decades I vividly remember conversations about growth versus profitability. “We need more scale and we need 100% capacity utilisation with ever expanding volume; it’s the only way to reduce costs and get industry growth.” This has and probably always will be true for manufacturing industries and there is an inevitable tension between the required investment prior to the arrival of scale and the profitability required to survive.

For most of the 35 years which my former employer survived, profits were slim or non existent. They are to be commended for breaking ground, but were perhaps just a little too early to the party and ultimately, missed the parade. Amongst other things, they just ran out of steam for frequent losses, volatility  and perpetually declining selling prices.

When I started with them in 1997, the entire world market was around 69MW – about the same amount as Australians will install in 4 weeks this year – and the average cost of PV was around $6.10/Watt compared to around $0.70c today.  So huge progress has been made and even some profits along the way for those able to sustain the changes. To their credit, my former employer, despite losses, did manage to turn the company around and start making profits. We worked tirelessly on building a powerful brand, impeccable quality and high value so we could get those profits. We fought against the commodotisation of our offer into “just a low cost solar panel” and relentlessly tried to build offers, instead. It worked, but just came too late.

Today, there are new giants in the world of PV. Industry revenues have grown from perhaps $500M in 1997 to more than $30Billion despite declining revenues (from falling sale price)  but there’s a catch –  if you make a loss in an industry this big, it can quickly become a very, very substantial number. It’s one things to lose a million or so in the interest of growing a business in an immature, niche market. It’s  another thing altogether to lose a Billion dollars when you are Nasdaq listed.

Clearly, today’s low solar prices are great for consumers but as I noted in my presentation last week, the International PV manufacturing industry is in a world of pain. Just looking at a sample of Q2 2012 statistics tells an alarming story;

1) The top 10 Chinese manufacturers have a combined debt of $7.8Billion dollars

2)The average gross margin across these same players is 4.7%, the lowest is -39%

3)Inventory across the top 14 manufacturers is worth $4.4Billion dollars – equivalent to around 27 million solar panels

4)According to our data, average selling price in Australia is around $0.70c/W and average manufacturing cost across the top 14 producers is – around $0.70c/Watt.

This is clearly not a healthy situation; in fact one PV manufacturer at All Energy described it as the “solar winter”. Our local solar price index below, demonstrates this price trajectory.

Coming back to Australia, what does this mean for our industry, for solar consumers and for the cost competitiveness of solar power?

Industry

Firstly, as I say to everyone I work with in the local PV industry “You are intrinsically connected to the global PV industry; if they lose money and collapse, you lose money and collapse. Never forget this. Don’t expect that shareholders and investors will allow loses at this level to accumulate; revenue is about vanity, proft is about sanity”

Secondly, you need to take a very close look at our PV products available in Australia in the context of market price, volume and quality. Fact 1- Our foreign exchange rate makes products cheaper than they often appear elsewhere. This has and can change in the blink of a GFC. Fact 2 – whilst we have achieved vastly improved market scale in Australia, typical purchase volumes in our market are 7-10 times lower than Germany (for example) – so should your buying price really be the same? And Fact 3 – in Australia more than 50% of our solar panels are from Tier 3 and Tier 2 suppliers. In our race to have cheap solar, we may be buying – and supplying  – the lowest possible quality from companies who even today may be non-existent.

Internationally, there is an all mightly stoush going on with trade barriers popping up in the US and the increasing likelyhood of the same in Europe before long, the justification being that selling below cost is anti-competitive.  I am sitting on the fence when it comes to the issue but in the local context, I am nothing short of alarmed at the proliferation of low end products. It wreaks of short term profiteering with no vision to a long term industry – from suppliers and dealers alike in some cases.

Consumers

Consumers of course want low solar prices. But I would suggest, and have increasing data to prove it, they don’t want low quality, poor service and a supplier who is likely to vanish. My advice to consumers is always “Caveat Emptor”  or buyer beware. In practice, what this means is ”You get what you pay for, ”Don’t expect something for nothing” and ”If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”.

Having watched a number of stories unfold about unhappy solar consumers and solar dealers over recent years, it would seem that these timeless sayings are being remembered again, but perhaps a little too slowly. The global situation and it’s local manifestations have the potential to leave a trail of unhappy customers in its wake. Think carefully about what you are buying and whether paying a little more is worthwhile.

Competitiveness

Ultimately, what a lot of this boils down to is competitiveness – in manufacturing and at the power socket. Industry has valiantly fought for decades to reach the all mystical “grid parity” – the point at which PV generates energy at the same cost as conventional power. Arguably, in some cases we are there – but in the context of manufacturers selling at or below cost, supplying low quality products and service and needing incentive mechanisms from Government to get the end price – we aren’t there yet.

PV has achieved a lot and will continue to develop and mature, but I would suggest that we need to be entirely cognisant of just what our current solar prices are made up of, and whether they are real enough just yet. Industry support from Government remains just as crucial for the PV industry in Australia (and beyond) as it does for other industries.

Don’t think this is the case? well take a look at the following graph. The Clean Energy Regulator released its latest Out of Pocket Expenses data last week and I presented a summary at All Energy that demonstrates how “wafer thin” our pricing structure is. In the last quarter, average system prices for sub 2kW systems INCREASED by almost 15% compared to the quarter before. It is my hypothesis that several things caused this increase. Firstly, margins are so thin our industry that drop in the STC mulitplier from 3-2 was passed straight through to consumers. Secondly, consumers are increasingly asking for a better quality of offer – they don’t want to wait 9 months for an install of have their roof tiles cracked or discover their supplier is gone before the system is installed. And the reality is that costs a little more to provide, also driving prices upwards.

So are we in fact living in a great Solar Price Illusion?

PV industry skeptics are likely to pick this story apart and grasp at some of these facts saying “We told you so; PV makes no sense, stick to coal and gas – their prices are an illusion!!”. Well, here’s the upshot – all prices are illusory, many industries get subsidies and industry profits ebb and flow with the vagaries of supply and demand. The trick is, to keep a strong sense on what is really going on inside the industry.

To deliver real world PV solutions, profitability and quality needs to rise pretty much right across the value chain and to do that, PV needs continued government support.

Our industry gets substantially less support than many other industries in Australia and is equally, if not more deserving, because it is tantalisingly close to cost competitiveness.

And why? Because Australia is uniquely blessed with the worlds largest, free energy resource, it’s the fastest growth industry in the world and we have a strong track record in making it work.

It’s pretty simple really.

Nigel Morris is the Director of SolarBusinessServices. After almost 20 years working for other companies SbS Director Nigel Morris, established the company in 2009 with a view to providing other organisations with the benefits of his wide experience in the renewable energy industry.

Article reproduced with permission.

Comments

5 responses to “The great solar price illusion”

  1. Roy Ramage Avatar
    Roy Ramage

    Hey Nigel, can you have a look at Tindo in SA and measure them in the market. They are top of the range, made here and have a good value proposition including inbuilt inverters. I would appreciate your expert opinion.

  2. Warwick Avatar
    Warwick

    Sounds like auto manufacturing or running an airline…

  3. Mario Avatar
    Mario

    Nigel very well articulated -what your alluding to as a future is consistent with all fast growing emerging industries it’s called a rationalization. We have ,unlike your original large scale manufacturering employer -ie BP Solar – got a plethora of spivs and shark shit in this industry which need to be cleansed from the system . So it’s market transformation on all fronts

  4. McMillan Pos Avatar

    I think we are wasting time even if we think about solar industry or solar panel prices. We should all do something practical in this field and not pay attention to solar price illusion. I saw a great example on the internet, it is about how to build your own diy pop-can solar panels using recycled pop cans (source: http://solar.freeonplate.com/diy-how-to/DIY-solar-panels.htm )
    So basically, everyone can build own solar panel and use solar heating for free…

  5. Pedro Schwindt Avatar
    Pedro Schwindt

    McMillan Pos, I think Nigel was talking about the Solar PV electric panel industry and market. The DIY project you are talking about is a solar thermal application, which can easily confuse some people. The materials in this project alone would cost about the same price as a similar sized PV panel I would guess. I think the solar electric industry has done more than any other clean energy technology to bring the issues of clean energy generation front and center for the general public, which long term is a good thing and definitely not a waste of time.

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