Just when you thought prices might just stabilize, here they go again! January is the highest price level in solar in over two years, according to Solarbuzz, an industry web portal.
And yet a clear distinction must be made between grid and off-grid market pricing. The offgrid market is much more of a “retail” oriented market where price points like $19.99,$29.99,etc. are of importance to the point where pressure will be extreme before a retailer agrees to go beyond them. One such instance however just occurred with Canadian Tire, a Canadian retailer leading the push to sell solar products by big box stores, being forced to increase flexible product pricing for a CIGS product which has no relation to the silicon shortage.
How to explain this phenomenon? The only sensible explanation is that the vendor or some part of the supply chain decided to take advantage of the silicon price increases and raise prices. There is no shortage of CIGS materials which should have forced a retailer to increase pricing by up to 20%, which took product over the magical “X9.99” price points.
Now we know that there are many new entrants into the off-grid technology race coming into play in 2006 and this will force the off-grid market back down much quicker than the grid market, only because there is no regulation in the offgrid market in Europe or North America. As mentioned before, its African countries that are leading the push for IEC control over off-grid panels due to the fact that when people are depending on their solar panels for food, you don’t mess around with ratings.
All to say that the expected stabilization in pricing has not yet occurred and that some are simply taking advantage rather than taking long term views. That is unfortunately the nature of the retail market where you have short term players whose only interest is bottom line immediate gain.
I frankly applaud Canadian Tire for the marvelous job their merchandise team has done in putting together such inertia behind renewable energy in Canada at retail. It started in 1994 and has really caught on in the most recent years. Hopefully the new technologies coming into play will permit the prices to come back down to levels where adoption by everyone from campers to boaters will not be hampered by price points which surpass the perceived value.
Sass Peress