Arne Jacobsen, a researcher at Humboldt University in the USA, recently did an online interview with Ben Kenney. Ben runs www.thewatt.com and podcasts worldwide the interviews that he does with various people regarding power and energy. He covers everything from oil to renewables in his website.
In a particular interview, podcast yesterday, the second half was dedicated to Arne’s testing of amorphous thin film solar panel activities. Arne’s testing was instrumental in ridding the Kenyan market (highest per capita user of solar in the developing world) and he is now doing similar testing in North America, as I had reported months ago.
As opposed to testing which ICP Solar has commissioned through various independant labs before, this is an initiative which comes from Prof. Jacobsen, and will be shortly publicized in its entirety, including the naming of the brands involved.
The initial results that he has reported in the podcast indicate that only Unisolar and ICP Solar (Sunsei brand) provide the rated power in the amorphous thin film modules that he has tested. The podcast was too short to mention the other brands which are only delivering up to 60% of their claimed power (even under ideal conditions), yet he clearly indicates that an amorphous maker in China is responsible for the propagation of the fake-rated panels.
Frankly speaking, it has often backfired when we ourselves “outed” the fakes, because either the customer did not care or had another agenda at hand (profits before quality). What is interesting for me is that what I’ve been telling the industry for over 3 years is now finally being confirmed independantly. Others are going to follow Arne’s footsteps and the publicity which we have been waiting for is finally coming to play.
How the various government consumer protection agencies react to these results will be most interesting indeed. In the end, we only have our reputations which will go with us wherever we are. In a world where nobody is perfect, only those that continue to improve will improve their brands.
As I no longer see those who engage in such activities to be our competition, the road to success for myself and our organization has been clearly defined three years ago and despite doing so at tremendous cost, we will stay that course, knowing who WE are.
Sass