The fine line…when does a claim help you and when does it hurt you…

From my good friend “John” today, comes this story on another solar blog about a solar company claiming to have the world’s greatest solar power module efficiency, far beyond that which any other has delivered to date.

This reminds me of postings of past when I challenge other off-grid manufacturers to a “face off” because they were hurting ICP Solar due to exaggerated claims. The fact is that there are markets which are regulated and ones that are not, and if you are playing in a regulated one..beware the long hands of the law.

While the market eventually gets smart to shoddy claims, people go around papering over and cleaning up whatever loose ends they leave in the hopes that they can still dupe somebody out of their money. In the case of this solar module claim, they are hoping to get government money to fund it. Somehow I have a feeling that they will not quite deliver on their claims that they will be in production soon. I checked internally here with my own “solar guru” and he tells us that these guys have been running around trying to get government money for a while, all unsuccessfully.

The solar industry is still not yet at the place where the standard test condition claims meet real world delivery, yet as more and more people come into our business from varied more mature industries, I have a positive feeling that the trend towards self-regulation will accelerate and the “coming of age” of the industry will demand greater integrity in matching power delivery with power ratings.

Sass

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