The U.S. solar trade surplus

This article was reported at Reuters on Friday. An interesting take on how we control a goodly portion of the raw material but not the final product. Is it a labor issue that prevents it from being stateside?

In shady territory, KF

We have a solar cell plant in the middle of our state ,Moses Lake, WA, It makes solar cells and silicon that it exports. My company picks it up sometimes (400 mile round trip) and take it to the airport to send to china.

My state also has a huge subsidy if a solar cell and inverter is manufactured in this state.
I talked to a local solar panel installer company. He told me that solar cells are a commodity that is easy available from many sources. He also said he tried to talk to the Moses Lake company to make panels for him but they weren't interested in small change.

It is a sign of colonialism when you ship raw materials to another country and buy it back as finished goods.

Do you know if the plant is located in Moses Lake is because it is close to the material resource or because it is close to cheap hydro/Bonneville? Kaiser Aluminum is located in Spokane because of the cheap power.

Washingtonian also, KF

Dont know for sure. It has cheap labor, a lot of sun. Land is cheap.

Many of our aluminum plants are mothballed. It seems they own a large percentage of electricity from utilities. With the price of electricity going up over the years, they sell their electricity on the open market and and it pays more profit then producing aluminum. They even payed wages and benefits for a couple of years before finally making a settlement with their workforce.

Same story with newsprint in the PNW. You can shut down the production and just use the steam plant to produce electricity by burning the hog and anything else you can purchase that will produce heat. With the difference in wages between here and the South, you can't compete with the newsprint price even if the trees are free. You can make a profit, with just the steam plant selling electricity.