The solar cells inside solar panels use the same materials as semiconductors and transistor chips inside computers, smartphones, and every other electronic device. Those little lights for controls on the television, computer, or stereo – they’re photovoltaic cells, complicated transistors that convert electrical current into visible light. Solar panels have the same transistor junctions but operating in reverse: they convert light into electricity.
You may not have noticed, but there’s a worldwide shortage of semiconductors. It’s been mushrooming for 6-8 months now but finally has made some headlines. Ford and GM have shut down several auto plants recently, due to the shortage. Virtually every auto manufacturer worldwide is doing the same thing.
It all started with the pandemic: demand for cars dropped off a cliff in the spring of 2020 while demand for computers for at-home schooling went through the roof. So, chip manufacturers geared their production lines to meet the at-home computer demand. That demand is still very strong worldwide, and there’s still no extra capacity for auto manufacturers. The White House is treating it, as they should, as an emergency. Biden recently had a meeting with tech executives, trying to get them on the ball.
Now add the Green New Deal and its trillion-dollar solar-panel ambitions. The solar cell industry had already been stymied by the worldwide chip shortage. Biden’s ambitions for 50 million new solar panels – well, you know that dastardly economics rule of supply and demand? The demand is literally several magnitudes the norm, and that’s going to drive prices for everything sky high.
Several major chip fabrication facilities have been damaged by fires, further hampering production. In Japan, factory fires and drought are limiting production even more. Meanwhile, around most of the world, the pandemic is continuing. Hence the demand for computers to be used for homeschooling and remote work is as strong as it was six months ago.
You can’t just go and build a bunch of new chip fabrication facilities, either. They cost $1 billion EACH to build. The industry isn’t going to invest all that money, not if demand will soon drop off ~ leaving those billion-dollar factories idle. Not to mention, it takes years to build a facility that large and complex; and years to fabricate all the complicated machines inside that actually create the computer chips.
Bottom line? Even if the money’s there, those millions of solar panels will be a long time coming ~ and much more expensive! Solar will have to wait in line behind computers and communication electronics, then behind auto manufactures – and everything is slowed down by the pandemic.
In the meanwhile, we’ll all just have to fight global warming on the home front via energy conservation. If you work hard and invest modest sums wisely, by the time you’re ready to put a solar panel on the roof – wow! – I‘ve saved so much energy that I only need half as many panels. Or – double wow! – I can go completely off the grid now?! Awesome!
P.S. Half of the solar panels in the world are made in China. In a limited-supply environment, guess who gets the solar panels first? China!
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Excerpted from Going Green, available as an eBook at this list of eBook retailers online.
