The solar energy industry has been developing at a frantic pace. That is why it is a very promising trend. The reason for this growth is that many developed countries have set their goals to become zero-carbon economies in a few decades. So now they are working on building numerous solar farms. For example, China’s plan is to become zero-carbon by 2060 which is really a great news.
However, everything is tightly interconnected on this planet. The climate and the economics and, unfortunately, the global coronavirus pandemic have shown how deep all the countries are interconnected. And now the solar energy sector is facing a world-wide shortage of solar panel components. Namely – glass shortage.
Global supply chain of solar panels
For those who do not know much about the solar supply chain – 80% of the special glass used for manufacturing of photovoltaic panels come from China. So due to the pandemic that has led to shutdowns of many factories in China and travel restrictions (Chinese workers often move to another part of the country for a job), the global supply chain of solar panels components has been completely disrupted.
The solar energy industry to grow rapidly
Since the supply of special solar panel glass is low and the demand has been rising for the last few years, the prices for the materials have skyrocketed. This price increase might have a very fatal effect on the solar energy industry. The thing is that except being a green technology, the energy produced by the solar panels has to be cheaper than the energy produced by burning fossil fuels. This is an important motivating factor not only for house owners, but also for big corporations. If generating electricity from the solar energy turns out to be uneconomical, it will be a serious blow on the industry and maybe even unrecoverable.
Double-sided solar panels
Also, the glass shortage happened in a very unfortunate time. Thus, this fact made the whole situation even worse. The solar industry is now switching to manufacturing double-sided solar panels. They are also called bifacial. So the need for the solar components has increased drastically.
Let’s see into bifacial solar panels to find out what is so special about them. One of the main issues of the solar energy sector is a limited amount of the sun energy that solar panels are able to catch. When the panels are faced directly to the sun, the solar panels are highly effective. But as soon as the sun moves away, the panels catch less and less sun beams. This is where double-sided photovoltaic panels come into play. The top side of the panels catches the sun that comes on them directly. Then, the bottom part absorbs the sun energy that reflects from the ground.
The effectiveness of these panels is 20-30% higher compared to usual one-sided panels. Which is a great success. That is why bifacial panels present a bright future the solar energy industry. In 2020 bifacial solar panels were occupying 14% of the market. While by 2022 they should make up 50% of the whole solar energy industry.
Is the solar energy industry in danger?
Now going back to the solar glass shortage. To make it even worse, in 2018 China’s government banned the solar glass manufacturers from building additional production facilities. Why? The glass production is very energy consuming and highly pollutive. So, the main glass producers in China are trying to appeal and get the ban removed at least for solar glass production.
The next negative factor is that China is planning to become a zero-carbon country by 2060. Thus, the solar energy companies will have to be building more and more solar energy facilities which will spike the prices for the solar components consigned for export even more. While the biggest part of produced solar components will be staying in China and be used for constructing new solar farms inside the country.