June 18, 2025 • 31 mins
Solar module prices have been cratering in recent years, dragged down by global oversupply. Yet while this glut of photovoltaics has hammered manufacturer profits, it has also allowed emerging economies that are hungry for affordable energy to get into the solar game, and demand growth is still strong this year. So what lies ahead for this notoriously tricky market, could energy storage help mitigate electricity price spikes, and what impact could the Trump administration’s tariffs have on domestic US solar manufacturing? On today’s show, Tom Rowlands-Rees is joined by Jenny Chase, a BloombergNEF solar specialist, to discuss findings from her note “2Q 2025 Global PV Market Outlook.”
Complementary BNEF research on the trends driving the transition to a lower-carbon economy can be found at BNEF<GO> on the Bloomberg Terminal or on bnef.com
Links to research notes from this episode:
2Q 2025 Global PV Market Outlook - https://www.bnef.com/insights/36693
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Tom Rowland's Reese and you're listening to Switched
on the podcast brought to you by bn EF. In
recent years, the world has been a wash, with cheap
solar hammering the profits of PV manufacturers while at the
same time opening up new export markets to developing nations
seeking affordable energy sources. Demand growth for solar is still strong,
with our global installation forecast for twenty twenty five set
(00:22):
to reach six hundred and ninety five gigawatts, exceeding the
five hundred and ninety nine gigawatts seen last year, but
headwinds remain in some territories, especially in the US, where
the Trump administration's tariffs have taken aim at the entire
value chain for key parts originating from China and some
Southeast Asian countries.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
So just how much.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Longer can module prices continue to decline? What impact has
large scale solar adoption had on energy markets, and could
the US government's policy actually support the growth of a
domestic PV manufacturing industry or harm it. Today I'm joined
by BNF Solar specialist Jenny Chase as we discuss findings
from her most recent PV market outlook, which b and
EF clients can find at b and EF go on
(01:00):
the Bloomberg terminal or on bnef dot com. All right,
let's get to talking about the out look for SOLA
with Jenny. So it is not very often that we
have a bona fide celebrity on the podcast, but I
(01:22):
said to my wife this morning that we are having
Jenny as a guest on the podcast, and she said,
who's Jenny? And I said, well, imagine if Sola was fashion,
then maybe Jenny is Anna Wintle. And my wife said, well,
does that mean she makes interns cry? And I said no,
it's just that, you know, very highly respected opinion, but
(01:43):
gives it.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
To you straight.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And she said, oh, you mean Jenny Chaser. So that's
why I mean that we have a bona fide celebrity.
So everything there is to know about Sola is contained
within the mind of Jenny. And so, Jenny, welcome to
the show. Really glad to have you on.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Hello Tom.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So we were just talking actually before we started recording
that today. You wanted to talk about, among other things,
the global oversupply in solar.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
So tell us a little bit more. And I do
have follow on questions around this, but yeah, what is it?
Can you just describe to us the situation as you
see it.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
So, solar manufacturing is a business in which it is
very hard to make in the lock dawn. It is
regularly the case that far more solar modules can be
made in a year than are actually bought. And this
is despite the fact that the volumes of solar modules
being bought and installed are growing at really quite a
rapid clip, and have been for the last twenty years.
The thing is that the solar manufacturing industry consistently expands
(02:37):
faster than demand. So even though demand is growing, you
regularly get these periods of oversupply where all the manufacturers
suffered negative profitability and quite a lot of them go bust.
We have been in one of those phases for about
a year now, and there's no sign of us coming
out of it.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I suppose the reason I have follow up questions is
I sort of get it where you describe. I have
this picture of, you know, two things that are growing
really fast, the demand for solar and the supply of solar.
And maybe if you're in the world of the supply
of solar, it's kind of hard to judge the pace
and so maybe the industry collectively sometimes overdoes it a
little bit and needs to slow down, which is kind
(03:11):
of how you're describing it.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I suppose.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
The question I have is is I don't remember a
time where you have ever said there's undersupply of solar.
I you know, you're saying that the market's going through
a really tough time, But I feel like whenever I
talked about solo, you're saying them.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Maybe I have a short memory, so it's both.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Now you're pretty much right. I mean, so in twenty
twenty two, demand actually group quite quickly, and prices the
solar model actually rose for a little while. So there
are periods where solar manufacturers can make fairly nice profits.
They just tend to be quite short. And what tends
to happen then is that they build new factories using
the latest technology, and when they built the factories use
(03:52):
the latest technology, the factories that are three years old,
and how obsolete.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
So a question I have here, I mean, this is
kind of almost like everything I've ever wanted to ask
Jenny about some of these dynamics.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Is why are people building these factories? Then?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
I mean, given what you're saying, why would anyone in
their right mind be investing in solar manufacturing.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Where you got me there, tom So, I think the
dynamic here is that if you're a solar manufacturer, you
always have a choice. You can expand you can build
a new factory using the latest technology, so making the
latest N type top con cels with the best efficiencies
in the market, and you can survive another year. Or
you can not do that. You can just run your
(04:34):
current capacity and you will lose market share and eventually
become obsolete. So you certainly have no choice but to
shoot for the stars. And of course if you shoot
for the stars, what happens to a great many of
these companies is that they fail, they burn up, they
go bankrupt. But there are always new investors willing to
come in because everybody loves sold there so much.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Is there an element because I've also been looking at
this from you know, the perspective of some of the
US efforts over the years to cultivate its own solar
manufacturing business. And I remember saying on actually the first
time I ever was a host on this podcast, we
had one of our US solar analysts who was talking about,
you know, the use of tariffs and incentives, and this
(05:14):
predates Trump to stimulate manufacturing in the US and this
kind of trying to fight it out with China, which
is I mean, point number one is that seems like
a battle that you're unlikely to win. But point number
two I made was is this a battle you even
want to win?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
It's like this.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
War over a little patch of desert where there is
the least arable land ever, and so the only conclusion
I could kind of come to was that some of
this interest was from a more of a national security
resilience point of view. Is that also a fact that
it's encouraging or incentivizing some of this investment we see globally,
particularly in China, is that it serves a strategic interest
(05:53):
and is therefore being encouraged.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Not in China.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
So around two thousand and eight, maybe even a bit
before twenty and four to twenty ten or so, the
Chinese federal government did support solar manufacturer. It particularly gave
the provincial government a remit to give land and permits
and suitable infrastructure to solar companies, and the big Chinese
state banks were willing to back manufacturers. So yes, there
(06:19):
was a period when for China solar manufacturing was strategically
important and the central government was supporting it.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
That phase has long long ended.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
The Chinese solar industry is viciously capitalist, that is, dog
eat dog, and the solar manufacturing industry is principally Chinese
companies competing with one another. In fact, the Chinese PV
Industry Association has tried to stop manufacturers selling at vices
as low as the vices currently are, and it largely
failed because it's very difficult to get five hundred companies
(06:48):
to all sell at higher devices that they are naturally
inclined to.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
So one of part of this cycle you've described is,
you know, companies going bust and then also this idea
of manufacturing capacity becoming obsolete. So when companies go bust,
to other companies swoop in and buy their factories or
is it by that stage those factories are worthless because
they're obsolete. You know what happens there?
Speaker 4 (07:12):
They do often get picked up by other players, usually
for quite small and absent money. And in China there
is a dynamic where the local government will lost and
back another company to take it over because it's a
bit let embarrassed than just closing that entirely. The major
Chinese module makers have also cut the number of employees
by significant amounts in twenty twenty four, simply because they're
(07:34):
reducing production and they're also increasing productivity per employee.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I just find this whole phenomenon so interesting. It reminds
me of that I don't remember the name of the
guy that Greek legend about the guy who had to
roll a stone up the hill, Cidyphus, Sisyphus. That's the
one that's kind of like what the solar industry seems
like to me. The way you describe it is you're
either pushing the stone up the hill, which is hard work,
(07:59):
or you're out of the game and back to the bottom.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
I think that's what makes that's what trying to make
money and solar manufacturing is like. I mean, Cis of
Firs was assigned that job as a punishment, and it
wasn't really a job. There is a good side to this,
which is the watch thank you. There is a good thing,
which is is that worldwide, consumers are getting really cheap modules,
(08:23):
and we see that even some quite poor countries like Pakistan,
South Africa and Nigeria are starting to deploy large about
sols now just because they are so cheap.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, I mean obviously.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
I mean I sometimes think when people talk about over
suppliers a problem like, well, whose problem is that? And
clearly there is an upside to all of this, which
is everywhere else benefits from this suffering that is happening
in the Chinese industry. I still just trying to work
out what's in it for Chinese solar manufacturers.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Is there is there an upside for any of them
or some of them.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Will survive and go on to the next phase.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
I suppose.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
I don't know where the next phase will be, but
sometimes they make money sometimes. I mean, what's the outside
of your job, Tom? I think we just have to
say sometimes these firms are doing what they do because
it's their job.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Fair enough.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Fair enough, Let's go back to the topic around incredibly
cheap solar everywhere in the world and what the knock
on effects of that are. I remember when I joined
n EF in two thousand and nine and you were
still in London. I was still in London, and you
were describing to me this Moore's law type decline in
(09:28):
solar prices, and I remember thinking like, wow, that's going
to completely change the world. It's like, so awesome, I
want to be in the solar team. And I suppose
now we're living in that world, that that sort of
trend we were seeing promised of incredibly cheap solar everywhere.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
So can you.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Describe a little bit about you know, what you're seeing
and how that's changing the game generally?
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Yeah, So you call it Moore's law. Then Moore's law
is just a special case of what we normally call
the experienced curve. And the basics of the experience curve
is every time the human race doubles its cumulative production
of something, and it's a manufactured commodity like solar modules,
like Brits, like semiconductor chips, we reduce the cost per
(10:10):
unit by a fairly fixed amount, and you can calculate
what that percentage is. Then it's usually around twenty percent
now for solar modules, calculate We can calculate this back
in nineteen seventy six. The trouble is, it depends wildly
on your assumption about inflation over that period. How you
normalize it, And right now the answer makes no sense
because the experienced curve says that solar models should be
(10:30):
significantly more offensive than they are, and they should be
slightly more expensive than they are, but if everyone was
making money in the value chain, but probably not that much.
So right now we're kind of looking at the experienced
curves suspiciously and saying, we'll see what happens when we
get a few more data points. But yes, right now
you can buy a solar module for nine then for
what in normal markets? So normal markets mean not the
(10:51):
US and not India either. This means that solar models
are so cheap that they're basically cheaper than fences. You know,
if you want to build a fence around your guards
in US up or China or most of the world
of that, you can use solar modules as fencing material,
and even if you don't bother wiring them up, you'd
probably save money versus buying some Liz Wold.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
This reminds me of in history, learning about hyperinflation in Viamar, Germany.
I saw this picture that was someone using banknotes as
wallpaper because that was cheaper than buying paper. So maybe
people are going to have solar wallpaper inside, you know,
completely pointless, but why not? So what consequences that having
on the energy industry?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
That you're seeing.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Well.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
The other thing is that it's not just cheap, there's
also quite a lot of it. We estimate that five
hundred and ninety nine gigawatts of solar modules were installed
in twenty twenty four, and about six hundred and ninety
five gigawatts would be installed this year in twenty twenty five.
And just for contexts, the entire global power system, all
the fossil field and everything, is approximately ten terra watts
(11:53):
at the start of this year. So if we're adding
like zero point seven terra watts a year to a
ten terra wats system is quite a lot. And of
course it's not evenly distributed. So what what's happening is
that when the sun's out power is very readily available,
it's very cheap, and in some cases there's actually more
solar power being generated than total demand, which causes problems.
(12:15):
I was just reading on the Solar News this morning
that in Cyprus, which is obviously a quite a tiny
part of the world and has now had quite a
lot of solar, fifty eight percent of the renewables generated
in the first five months of this year have been curtailed.
That is thrown away because the grid can't take them.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Wow, that is the highest curtailment numbers I've ever heard,
I know, right.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
I mean this time of year in northern Northern Hemisphere
you always get high solar catailment because it's it's sunny.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Particularly since it's over like you know, you're not just saying,
oh and this hour fifty eight percent with ktail, you're
talking over a whole month. It's over five months.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
Yeah, so last year in total, twenty nine percent was katail.
But that, I mean that's like economically a disaster.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Well, not if you're an electricity cons well.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I mean, first of all, those results are not being
fed directly to electricity consumers.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
But yes, in sery, you're if you could use that.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Electricity that would otherwise be wasted, it would not be
a problem. That is not easy to do though, because
it's all being generated at the same time.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I mean, I look at power markets, So this is
something I also think about a lot, is the disruptive
effect of solar and how batteries can manage that. But
I just want to step back to look at the
big picture. It seems like there's this wave starting, you know,
with upstream solar and those cost declines, and you know,
the solar industry being a hard place to make money,
(13:38):
and it then feeds into every subsequent step in the
value chain and is now impacting power markets and power prices.
And is this going to one day lead to a
point in time where just how you're saying it's incredibly
hard to make money manufacturing solar because it's just getting
cheaper all the time, that we're also going to say
it's incredibly hard to make money selling electricity because it
(13:58):
essentially has no value because of all of this solar
Do you.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Think that that's where we're trending towards.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Well, it's incredibly difficult to make money selling power in
sunny hours already, that doesn't mean that there's no money
in selling electricity. The obvious solution is batteries, but it's
not actually trivial to solve all your solar time shifting
problems with batteries.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Why not in your opinion.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
So basically it's about utilization. If you're in a place
where all the days are the same length and it's
sunny every day, then you can charge your battery every
day and discharge it every day, and you run that
battery three hundred and sixty five times in a year, right, Yeah, However,
most places are not like that. Most places have seasonality,
they have variation in demand, and I mean, if it's
northern Europe, we have winter, it is quite a long
(14:42):
period where your solar panels don't generate much, and so
your battery doesn't run every day. Your batteries it's empty
all winter basically, and then it sits full all summer.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
I hear what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Are we setting an unrealistic bar here? It's a little
bit where like when people who are skeptical about renewables say, oh,
wind and solar aren't the solution, because you know, the
sun isn't always shining, the wind isn't always blowing, and
they're setting this bar of this thing is useless because
you can't depend on it one hundred percent of the time,
(15:16):
Whereas the reality is is, yes, it can get you,
I don't know, depending on where you are, fifty to
eighty percent of the I just pulled these numbers out
out of thin air.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Oh yeah, so it's not it's definitely not useless. I mean,
it's already not useless, right. Twenty twenty two and twenty
twenty three Europe was pretty glad of its solar because
it meant we burnt less Russian gas.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, and I guess I'm you know, I mean, I
think I'm preaching to the choir here. I know that
you don't think that solar is useless. I guess what
I'm saying is, are we setting a like for anyone
to expect that batteries would completely solve the problem of
solar being at the wrong time that even in those
northern climates you described, surely, up to a point, they're
still very.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Useful up to a point, yes, but bear by that
the economics of those batteries gets very bad when you
stop running them three hundred and sixty five times a
year and you start running them past that. For example,
I mean that instantly means that the costs can make
what hour you're shifting doubles if you have the number
of times it runs. And so that's why our new
Energy Outlook modeling, which among the other scenarios we run,
(16:15):
we have something called the net zero scenario, which is
about how we totally get to net zero by twenty fifty.
One of the things that that model doesn't actually rely
that heavily on solar and store it. I think it
ends up with about fifty percent solar in a literacy mix.
That model really wants to build wind and the reason
is that wind blows in the winter, which means that
you can also charge your batteries in the winter.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
So kind of going back then to the fundamental question around,
you know, we've got solar over capacity globally, and then
it almost sounds like solar overbuild happening in certain places
that you know you can't one hundred percent solved with batteries,
and you know you need to bring in another time.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
I mean, at the moment, the levels we're at, we
can solve that with batteries, and of course that's what
people are doing. They're building lots of batteries. In fact,
a quick calculation suggests that twenty percent of the utility
scale PV built last year had a battery attached.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
I suppose I'm talking about like the example in Cypress.
Is Cypress now at a stage where I suppose the
question I was going to ask is why is anyone
still building solar in Cypress?
Speaker 3 (17:14):
So I'm kind of I kind of hope they're not.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
I had a quick poke around on their Electricity operate
a website and it looks like they still are, so.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
That rock up the hill as well via the sounds
of things.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Cyprus has something called a net billing where you can
export power into the grid and be paid for it
for your solar panels, and of course you're being paid
for it, but that money has to come from somewhere
and the money is not actually worse it's also not
safe in so this is this is probably not a
good policy. It's not sustainable and I don't think the
Cypress Coop has removed it yet.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
So a lot of farmers in Cypress, I'm presuming, will
have solar fencing at this point in time.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Yeah, or solar roofs.
Speaker 4 (17:52):
And what they'll do next hopefully has put some batteries
in and this will almost certainly alleviate a big part
of the problem. But push into one hundred percent might
be a bit difficult. I don't know the climate of
Cyprus for some.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
No, but you would expect that you know ultimately that
the market pull of batteries because it this represents a
huge opportunity for batteries. I mean, my team looks at
power market dynamics and one of the things I realized
as we've modeled batteries and prices together, is the biggest
opportunity for batteries is not the high prices in the
summer when the sun goes down. It's the cheap prices
(18:28):
when they can charge you know. I mean, obviously if
you look at their daily revenues from the wholesale market,
and obviously batteries make money in other ways. The most
profitable seasons are not when power prices are highest. It's
when power price is the lowest. So we're looking at Cyprus.
That's a huge opportunity that will presumably rebalance itself at
some point. And this is maybe a question, and you know,
(18:49):
I just say this more speculatively because this goes beyond
both of our own teams. I always wonder why we're
not seeing more industries popping up that make use of
insanely cheap or even negatively priced electricity that is available
some of the time. You know, I don't know what
this creative application is, but there has to be something
(19:10):
someone can do with free energy.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
I presume, well, it's a capex pub isn't it, Because
it is if.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
We're thinking in terms of all of the industrial applications
we can think of. I'm just saying there must be
some use for free energy that is only available some
of the time.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
I'm just I'm not asking expect.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
This question to be very low capex, because yes, you
can run a data center or something, but data centers
don't run for three or four hours a.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Day, right, So data centers aren't the answer. I guess
what I'm saying is we have kind of scoped out
what this has to look like. Has to be a
low capex industry that can benefit from free energy. Maybe
this industry doesn't yet exist. So listeners, especially those of
you at the start of your careers, you can come
up with something you can might get super rich.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
I mean, to make this electricity into heat, all you
need is a big one with some resistance. Right, So
if hardware is actually negative, you could probably make money
out of just having a really big wire and forcing
it down it. But you could also, for example, eat
up a big pile of salt or a pile of
water and store it for winter to run your district
heat it. That's being tried in some of the Scandinavian countries.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
That makes sense.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
There's also power to gas, but that is also quite
high topics for the futical companies.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah, and I also wonder if power to gas, from
my understanding, does it have the flexibility to be ramping
up and down all the time, which is a key
parameter here, I mean.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
Potentially, Yes, A hydrogen team seems to think that you
could have electoralizers that run for sort of four hours day,
so you could make hard I mean, you can make hydrogen,
but electoralizers are really expensive.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, that it violates the capex parameter that you put
in place exactly.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
But if you if you could make a really cheap,
even quite low efficiency electoralizer and trickle generate hydrogen, that
might be something work all right.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Well, anyway, putting it out there for everyone who's again,
particularly those of you who are entering into this space,
very cheap electricity some of the time represents a huge
opportunity for someone, so get creative. So I'm in the
US right now, and the US has a relatively new
government that has lots of ideas about the energy industry
(21:21):
and global trade, and this is manifesting itself in potentially
the rescinding of tax credits for various technologies, including solar.
Also in tariffs on imports, particularly anything that has been
touched by China. So, from your point of view of
someone looking at solar globally, how much of a big
(21:41):
deal is this? You know, seeing here it feels like
the deglobalization of solar is that to.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
A beretrant tom or people who are in America. So
the US market is about fifty two gigawats, the global
market is six hundred and ninety five gigawats this year.
China of that is three hund and sixty eighty. What's
so whether the US buys or not is not of
primary importance to people outside.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
The US, does it?
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Because my understanding of the situation prior to some of
these tariff changes is that, I mean, there were already
tariffs on Chinese solar.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
There were, So the US has had tariffs on Chinese
solar imports since twenty twelve, and in consequence, most of
the direct imports of solar components to the US don't
come from China at all. They came from South Southeast Asia,
four countries specifically, and recent rounds of tariffs, which were
actually proposed under the previous US government, put tariffs on
(22:36):
those four countries. So they're Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam,
and that does push up probably the price of supply
to the US market, but there are also more sweeping
import tariffs on everything.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I suppose this whole Southeast Asia as being a channel
for solar to come into the US from China via
Southeast Asia effectively, and these are Chinese companies operating in
Southeast Asia. My understand was that this little kind of
anomaly in the global industry was one of the few
(23:06):
areas where there was actually a healthy profit margin for
the solar manufacturers involved. So I suppose a question I
have is if that sort of loophole is now being closed,
does that have a significant impact on the solar industry.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
Well, a lot of these factory eat in Southeast Asia
will disclose on the companies that will take lots on them,
because it is true the US people love to pay
for things, and so solar modules in the US cost
about twenty seven US sense per what versus nine cents
outside the US. So yes, even though the costs slightly
higher to manufacturer in South East Asia, these were some
of the more profitable businesses.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
So stepping back, so I hear your message, This doesn't
really affect the global industry for solar that much.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
How do you see it affecting solar in the US.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
Well, I think it's going to hurt because, first of all,
there were a bunch of manufacturers who were setting up
sell factory EAT in the US because the Inflation and
Reduction app had some very specific, quite generous incentives for
manufacturing the US, which first of all could go away,
and secondly could be affected by one possible provision in
the latest One Big Beautiful Bill if it goes forward
(24:12):
as currently anticipated, in that it looks as if components
and materials from China might not be allowed for important
into the USS. And depending on how extensively that is prosecuted,
it may be quite difficult to make a solar module
using nothing contract.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Right, So, if the goal is to and I'm not
saying that this is a realistic goal before you shoot
it down, but let's just say, if the goal is
to cultivate a US solar manufacturing industry, there is maybe
a goldilocks zone of just the right amount of tariffing
where you create a dependence on stuff manufactured in the US,
(24:51):
but you still don't completely shut off that manufacturing having
what it needs, and what you're saying is it looks
like we might be going beyond that Goldilock zone at
the moment.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
Absolutely, it's also so unpredictable. You know, if you're a
company who's trying to decide whether to proceed with building
a high tapics factory in the US, you want to
be able to predict what the environment it's going to
be like in two to three years time. And the
country that's done that much better is India. India is
much more successful, it's establishing a domestic manufacturing industry US
(25:21):
just through being much more predictable.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Got it.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
That's such an important point. And I think something that
you know at bn EF, I know, since I joined,
we've been saying policy consistency is key. Policy inconsistency just
renders all policy ineffective unless the policy is to kill
something off. And I suppose that's maybe a real danger
for the US is the potential flip flopping means it's
(25:46):
impossible to incentivize anything exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
I mean, in some respects, the US has quite a
predictable business environment, as the Investment Tax Credit was guaranteed
for periods that frankly European product developers.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Would love to have.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
But it well, the latest government has just thrown everything
into the air, and who knows where the cars will
come down.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Well, we shall surely see.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
So Tom, I have a question for you. Since you've
been tracking US power markets, we see California as world
leading in terms of adoption. California has got what eleven
gigawatsa batteries, and a grid with peak demand it's about
fifty gigwatts that's got to be helping to integrate all this. Solda, right,
what's going on in California?
Speaker 1 (26:28):
I mean, it's really interesting what you see, and some
of this is more what we've seen in our modeling,
and we gradually see it taking shape in the market.
But you know, California is famous for its duck curve,
the shape of the power price throughout the day. And
I'm not going to be able to describe a duck
over the you know, let's just say that the power
(26:49):
price goes down, and then it goes up, and then
it goes down again.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
It kind of peaks in the.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Late afternoon, and that apparently looks like the head of
a duck when you put it.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
On a truck.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Because everyone's using air and after the sun goes down.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, absolutely, so, yeah, that's the typical profile.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
And the other country in my world, because I also
have the now the European Power Team reports to me,
it's very similar in Spain, which is the one country
in Europe where there's a decent amount of air conditioning.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
They have their own version of this.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
And the thing you see in markets like this as
you add in more storage to go with your solar
is the price throughout the day. It just becomes like binary.
There's a high price period and a low price period.
It's kind of flat because batteries like balance everything out
even within those places if you're assuming they're cycling once
a day, so you get a cheap period of the
day which is when solar is generating, and then a
(27:38):
more expensive period of the day when it's not. And
that's because if you were to add more batteries to
make it just an even price throughout the whole day,
then batteries wouldn't make any money, so no one would
add those batteries, So you're never going to have this
situation where it's just a consistent price throughout the day.
But it becomes just much more a two tone situation.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
The thing that's.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Interesting, though, is even in our forecast, we still see
days where there's not enough batteries to lap up all
the solar, and so I mean, I suppose what you'll
see is curtailment. So even with a lot of batteries,
you still have and this this goes back to what
I'm saying, You're still going to have those times where
electricity is insane nee che.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
But also times when it's the same expensive simply not really.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
I suppose this is the point is that I mean,
because let's say you've got enough batteries to soak up
the majority of an entire day's worth of solar, and
then you might have a period of a few hours
where prices would be really high. Well, then that's going
to be the hours where the majority of batteries is
going to be discharging to push that price down to
(28:41):
the level because they're always going to prioritize concentrating their
discharge in those hours. So I suppose what I'm saying
is batteries will make price dynamics a little bit less explosive.
They'll be a bit more boring, but it's going to
go from being all over the place and then maybe
a really high peak in the afternoon, which is what
you see in the sort of duck curve scenario to
just like on time and off time.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
That also been the batteries cannibalized there.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Great point, and yeah, and that's exactly right. It's like
the total demand in a market sets a in a way,
a ceiling on how much solar you can take before
price cannibalization takes over. And then the total amount of
solar in the market creates a ceiling for how much
batteries the market can take. And so you know, this
(29:27):
is what you know batteries when you see them build anywhere.
It's like it follows on from solar. Solar creates the
opportunity for those batteries, and ultimately the amount of solar
you have in the market is the amount of opportunity
there is for batteries. You now, what the ideal ratio
between the two is is kind of depends on your assumptions.
But that's kind of how I see it from what
I'm seeing in markets. But yeah, the cannibalization of batteries
(29:47):
is a thing as well.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
I suppose what you could say with.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Batteries and that the price dynamics you see there is
it almost traces all the way back to where we
started the conversation. Solar is getting insanely cheap as manufacturers
are cannibalizing their own revenues, and the knock on effect
is that solar then is really cheap and getting built
in a lot of markets and therefore cannibalizing its own revenues,
which creates an opportunity for storage, which can pile in
(30:11):
and in turn cannibalize its own revenues, which means that
it's good in any of these spaces to either be
early or to have been early, because it might be
too late in some instances.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
And ultimately, I.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Would say all of this is, if this gets passed
down to consumer, a good thing, because more electricity will
cost less. Jenny, thank you very much for joining us.
Today's has been a really fascinating discussion.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Thank you very much. Tom.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Today's episode of Switched On was produced by Cam Gray
with production assistance from Kamala Shelling. Bloomberg NEF is a
service provided by Bloomberg Finance LP and its affiliates. This
recording does not constitute, nor should it be construed as
investment advice.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Investment recommendations, or a recommendation as to an investment or
other strategy Bloomberg ANIAF should not be considered as information
sufficient upon which to base an investment decision. Neither Bloomberg
Finance LP nor any of its affiliates makes any representation
or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of the
information contained in this recording, and any
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Liability as a result of this recording is expressly disclaimed
This is Tom Rowland's Reese and you're listening to Switched
on the podcast brought to you by bn EF. In
recent years, the world has been a wash, with cheap
solar hammering the profits of PV manufacturers while at the
same time opening up new export markets to developing nations
seeking affordable energy sources. Demand growth for solar is still strong,
with our global installation forecast for twenty twenty five set
(00:22):
to reach six hundred and ninety five gigawatts, exceeding the
five hundred and ninety nine gigawatts seen last year, but
headwinds remain in some territories, especially in the US, where
the Trump administration's tariffs have taken aim at the entire
value chain for key parts originating from China and some
Southeast Asian countries.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
So just how much.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Longer can module prices continue to decline? What impact has
large scale solar adoption had on energy markets, and could
the US government's policy actually support the growth of a
domestic PV manufacturing industry or harm it. Today I'm joined
by BNF Solar specialist Jenny Chase as we discuss findings
from her most recent PV market outlook, which b and
EF clients can find at b and EF go on
(01:00):
the Bloomberg terminal or on bnef dot com. All right,
let's get to talking about the out look for SOLA
with Jenny. So it is not very often that we
have a bona fide celebrity on the podcast, but I
(01:22):
said to my wife this morning that we are having
Jenny as a guest on the podcast, and she said,
who's Jenny? And I said, well, imagine if Sola was fashion,
then maybe Jenny is Anna Wintle. And my wife said, well,
does that mean she makes interns cry? And I said no,
it's just that, you know, very highly respected opinion, but
(01:43):
gives it.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
To you straight.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
And she said, oh, you mean Jenny Chaser. So that's
why I mean that we have a bona fide celebrity.
So everything there is to know about Sola is contained
within the mind of Jenny. And so, Jenny, welcome to
the show. Really glad to have you on.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Hello Tom.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So we were just talking actually before we started recording
that today. You wanted to talk about, among other things,
the global oversupply in solar.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
So tell us a little bit more. And I do
have follow on questions around this, but yeah, what is it?
Can you just describe to us the situation as you
see it.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
So, solar manufacturing is a business in which it is
very hard to make in the lock dawn. It is
regularly the case that far more solar modules can be
made in a year than are actually bought. And this
is despite the fact that the volumes of solar modules
being bought and installed are growing at really quite a
rapid clip, and have been for the last twenty years.
The thing is that the solar manufacturing industry consistently expands
(02:37):
faster than demand. So even though demand is growing, you
regularly get these periods of oversupply where all the manufacturers
suffered negative profitability and quite a lot of them go bust.
We have been in one of those phases for about
a year now, and there's no sign of us coming
out of it.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I suppose the reason I have follow up questions is
I sort of get it where you describe. I have
this picture of, you know, two things that are growing
really fast, the demand for solar and the supply of solar.
And maybe if you're in the world of the supply
of solar, it's kind of hard to judge the pace
and so maybe the industry collectively sometimes overdoes it a
little bit and needs to slow down, which is kind
(03:11):
of how you're describing it.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I suppose.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
The question I have is is I don't remember a
time where you have ever said there's undersupply of solar.
I you know, you're saying that the market's going through
a really tough time, But I feel like whenever I
talked about solo, you're saying them.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Maybe I have a short memory, so it's both.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Now you're pretty much right. I mean, so in twenty
twenty two, demand actually group quite quickly, and prices the
solar model actually rose for a little while. So there
are periods where solar manufacturers can make fairly nice profits.
They just tend to be quite short. And what tends
to happen then is that they build new factories using
the latest technology, and when they built the factories use
(03:52):
the latest technology, the factories that are three years old,
and how obsolete.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
So a question I have here, I mean, this is
kind of almost like everything I've ever wanted to ask
Jenny about some of these dynamics.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Is why are people building these factories? Then?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
I mean, given what you're saying, why would anyone in
their right mind be investing in solar manufacturing.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Where you got me there, tom So, I think the
dynamic here is that if you're a solar manufacturer, you
always have a choice. You can expand you can build
a new factory using the latest technology, so making the
latest N type top con cels with the best efficiencies
in the market, and you can survive another year. Or
you can not do that. You can just run your
(04:34):
current capacity and you will lose market share and eventually
become obsolete. So you certainly have no choice but to
shoot for the stars. And of course if you shoot
for the stars, what happens to a great many of
these companies is that they fail, they burn up, they
go bankrupt. But there are always new investors willing to
come in because everybody loves sold there so much.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Is there an element because I've also been looking at
this from you know, the perspective of some of the
US efforts over the years to cultivate its own solar
manufacturing business. And I remember saying on actually the first
time I ever was a host on this podcast, we
had one of our US solar analysts who was talking about,
you know, the use of tariffs and incentives, and this
(05:14):
predates Trump to stimulate manufacturing in the US and this
kind of trying to fight it out with China, which
is I mean, point number one is that seems like
a battle that you're unlikely to win. But point number
two I made was is this a battle you even
want to win?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
It's like this.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
War over a little patch of desert where there is
the least arable land ever, and so the only conclusion
I could kind of come to was that some of
this interest was from a more of a national security
resilience point of view. Is that also a fact that
it's encouraging or incentivizing some of this investment we see globally,
particularly in China, is that it serves a strategic interest
(05:53):
and is therefore being encouraged.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Not in China.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
So around two thousand and eight, maybe even a bit
before twenty and four to twenty ten or so, the
Chinese federal government did support solar manufacturer. It particularly gave
the provincial government a remit to give land and permits
and suitable infrastructure to solar companies, and the big Chinese
state banks were willing to back manufacturers. So yes, there
(06:19):
was a period when for China solar manufacturing was strategically
important and the central government was supporting it.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
That phase has long long ended.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
The Chinese solar industry is viciously capitalist, that is, dog
eat dog, and the solar manufacturing industry is principally Chinese
companies competing with one another. In fact, the Chinese PV
Industry Association has tried to stop manufacturers selling at vices
as low as the vices currently are, and it largely
failed because it's very difficult to get five hundred companies
(06:48):
to all sell at higher devices that they are naturally
inclined to.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
So one of part of this cycle you've described is,
you know, companies going bust and then also this idea
of manufacturing capacity becoming obsolete. So when companies go bust,
to other companies swoop in and buy their factories or
is it by that stage those factories are worthless because
they're obsolete. You know what happens there?
Speaker 4 (07:12):
They do often get picked up by other players, usually
for quite small and absent money. And in China there
is a dynamic where the local government will lost and
back another company to take it over because it's a
bit let embarrassed than just closing that entirely. The major
Chinese module makers have also cut the number of employees
by significant amounts in twenty twenty four, simply because they're
(07:34):
reducing production and they're also increasing productivity per employee.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I just find this whole phenomenon so interesting. It reminds
me of that I don't remember the name of the
guy that Greek legend about the guy who had to
roll a stone up the hill, Cidyphus, Sisyphus. That's the
one that's kind of like what the solar industry seems
like to me. The way you describe it is you're
either pushing the stone up the hill, which is hard work,
(07:59):
or you're out of the game and back to the bottom.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
I think that's what makes that's what trying to make
money and solar manufacturing is like. I mean, Cis of
Firs was assigned that job as a punishment, and it
wasn't really a job. There is a good side to this,
which is the watch thank you. There is a good thing,
which is is that worldwide, consumers are getting really cheap modules,
(08:23):
and we see that even some quite poor countries like Pakistan,
South Africa and Nigeria are starting to deploy large about
sols now just because they are so cheap.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, I mean obviously.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
I mean I sometimes think when people talk about over
suppliers a problem like, well, whose problem is that? And
clearly there is an upside to all of this, which
is everywhere else benefits from this suffering that is happening
in the Chinese industry. I still just trying to work
out what's in it for Chinese solar manufacturers.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Is there is there an upside for any of them
or some of them.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Will survive and go on to the next phase.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
I suppose.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
I don't know where the next phase will be, but
sometimes they make money sometimes. I mean, what's the outside
of your job, Tom? I think we just have to
say sometimes these firms are doing what they do because
it's their job.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Fair enough.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Fair enough, Let's go back to the topic around incredibly
cheap solar everywhere in the world and what the knock
on effects of that are. I remember when I joined
n EF in two thousand and nine and you were
still in London. I was still in London, and you
were describing to me this Moore's law type decline in
(09:28):
solar prices, and I remember thinking like, wow, that's going
to completely change the world. It's like, so awesome, I
want to be in the solar team. And I suppose
now we're living in that world, that that sort of
trend we were seeing promised of incredibly cheap solar everywhere.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
So can you.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Describe a little bit about you know, what you're seeing
and how that's changing the game generally?
Speaker 4 (09:50):
Yeah, So you call it Moore's law. Then Moore's law
is just a special case of what we normally call
the experienced curve. And the basics of the experience curve
is every time the human race doubles its cumulative production
of something, and it's a manufactured commodity like solar modules,
like Brits, like semiconductor chips, we reduce the cost per
(10:10):
unit by a fairly fixed amount, and you can calculate
what that percentage is. Then it's usually around twenty percent
now for solar modules, calculate We can calculate this back
in nineteen seventy six. The trouble is, it depends wildly
on your assumption about inflation over that period. How you
normalize it, And right now the answer makes no sense
because the experienced curve says that solar models should be
(10:30):
significantly more offensive than they are, and they should be
slightly more expensive than they are, but if everyone was
making money in the value chain, but probably not that much.
So right now we're kind of looking at the experienced
curves suspiciously and saying, we'll see what happens when we
get a few more data points. But yes, right now
you can buy a solar module for nine then for
what in normal markets? So normal markets mean not the
(10:51):
US and not India either. This means that solar models
are so cheap that they're basically cheaper than fences. You know,
if you want to build a fence around your guards
in US up or China or most of the world
of that, you can use solar modules as fencing material,
and even if you don't bother wiring them up, you'd
probably save money versus buying some Liz Wold.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
This reminds me of in history, learning about hyperinflation in Viamar, Germany.
I saw this picture that was someone using banknotes as
wallpaper because that was cheaper than buying paper. So maybe
people are going to have solar wallpaper inside, you know,
completely pointless, but why not? So what consequences that having
on the energy industry?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
That you're seeing.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Well.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
The other thing is that it's not just cheap, there's
also quite a lot of it. We estimate that five
hundred and ninety nine gigawatts of solar modules were installed
in twenty twenty four, and about six hundred and ninety
five gigawatts would be installed this year in twenty twenty five.
And just for contexts, the entire global power system, all
the fossil field and everything, is approximately ten terra watts
(11:53):
at the start of this year. So if we're adding
like zero point seven terra watts a year to a
ten terra wats system is quite a lot. And of
course it's not evenly distributed. So what what's happening is
that when the sun's out power is very readily available,
it's very cheap, and in some cases there's actually more
solar power being generated than total demand, which causes problems.
(12:15):
I was just reading on the Solar News this morning
that in Cyprus, which is obviously a quite a tiny
part of the world and has now had quite a
lot of solar, fifty eight percent of the renewables generated
in the first five months of this year have been curtailed.
That is thrown away because the grid can't take them.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Wow, that is the highest curtailment numbers I've ever heard,
I know, right.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
I mean this time of year in northern Northern Hemisphere
you always get high solar catailment because it's it's sunny.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Particularly since it's over like you know, you're not just saying,
oh and this hour fifty eight percent with ktail, you're
talking over a whole month. It's over five months.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
Yeah, so last year in total, twenty nine percent was katail.
But that, I mean that's like economically a disaster.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Well, not if you're an electricity cons well.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
I mean, first of all, those results are not being
fed directly to electricity consumers.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
But yes, in sery, you're if you could use that.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
Electricity that would otherwise be wasted, it would not be
a problem. That is not easy to do though, because
it's all being generated at the same time.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
I mean, I look at power markets, So this is
something I also think about a lot, is the disruptive
effect of solar and how batteries can manage that. But
I just want to step back to look at the
big picture. It seems like there's this wave starting, you know,
with upstream solar and those cost declines, and you know,
the solar industry being a hard place to make money,
(13:38):
and it then feeds into every subsequent step in the
value chain and is now impacting power markets and power prices.
And is this going to one day lead to a
point in time where just how you're saying it's incredibly
hard to make money manufacturing solar because it's just getting
cheaper all the time, that we're also going to say
it's incredibly hard to make money selling electricity because it
(13:58):
essentially has no value because of all of this solar
Do you.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Think that that's where we're trending towards.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
Well, it's incredibly difficult to make money selling power in
sunny hours already, that doesn't mean that there's no money
in selling electricity. The obvious solution is batteries, but it's
not actually trivial to solve all your solar time shifting
problems with batteries.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Why not in your opinion.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
So basically it's about utilization. If you're in a place
where all the days are the same length and it's
sunny every day, then you can charge your battery every
day and discharge it every day, and you run that
battery three hundred and sixty five times in a year, right, Yeah, However,
most places are not like that. Most places have seasonality,
they have variation in demand, and I mean, if it's
northern Europe, we have winter, it is quite a long
(14:42):
period where your solar panels don't generate much, and so
your battery doesn't run every day. Your batteries it's empty
all winter basically, and then it sits full all summer.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
I hear what you're saying.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Are we setting an unrealistic bar here? It's a little
bit where like when people who are skeptical about renewables say, oh,
wind and solar aren't the solution, because you know, the
sun isn't always shining, the wind isn't always blowing, and
they're setting this bar of this thing is useless because
you can't depend on it one hundred percent of the time,
(15:16):
Whereas the reality is is, yes, it can get you,
I don't know, depending on where you are, fifty to
eighty percent of the I just pulled these numbers out
out of thin air.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Oh yeah, so it's not it's definitely not useless. I mean,
it's already not useless, right. Twenty twenty two and twenty
twenty three Europe was pretty glad of its solar because
it meant we burnt less Russian gas.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, and I guess I'm you know, I mean, I
think I'm preaching to the choir here. I know that
you don't think that solar is useless. I guess what
I'm saying is, are we setting a like for anyone
to expect that batteries would completely solve the problem of
solar being at the wrong time that even in those
northern climates you described, surely, up to a point, they're
still very.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Useful up to a point, yes, but bear by that
the economics of those batteries gets very bad when you
stop running them three hundred and sixty five times a
year and you start running them past that. For example,
I mean that instantly means that the costs can make
what hour you're shifting doubles if you have the number
of times it runs. And so that's why our new
Energy Outlook modeling, which among the other scenarios we run,
(16:15):
we have something called the net zero scenario, which is
about how we totally get to net zero by twenty fifty.
One of the things that that model doesn't actually rely
that heavily on solar and store it. I think it
ends up with about fifty percent solar in a literacy mix.
That model really wants to build wind and the reason
is that wind blows in the winter, which means that
you can also charge your batteries in the winter.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
So kind of going back then to the fundamental question around,
you know, we've got solar over capacity globally, and then
it almost sounds like solar overbuild happening in certain places
that you know you can't one hundred percent solved with batteries,
and you know you need to bring in another time.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
I mean, at the moment, the levels we're at, we
can solve that with batteries, and of course that's what
people are doing. They're building lots of batteries. In fact,
a quick calculation suggests that twenty percent of the utility
scale PV built last year had a battery attached.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
I suppose I'm talking about like the example in Cypress.
Is Cypress now at a stage where I suppose the
question I was going to ask is why is anyone
still building solar in Cypress?
Speaker 3 (17:14):
So I'm kind of I kind of hope they're not.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
I had a quick poke around on their Electricity operate
a website and it looks like they still are, so.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
That rock up the hill as well via the sounds
of things.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
Cyprus has something called a net billing where you can
export power into the grid and be paid for it
for your solar panels, and of course you're being paid
for it, but that money has to come from somewhere
and the money is not actually worse it's also not
safe in so this is this is probably not a
good policy. It's not sustainable and I don't think the
Cypress Coop has removed it yet.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
So a lot of farmers in Cypress, I'm presuming, will
have solar fencing at this point in time.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
Yeah, or solar roofs.
Speaker 4 (17:52):
And what they'll do next hopefully has put some batteries
in and this will almost certainly alleviate a big part
of the problem. But push into one hundred percent might
be a bit difficult. I don't know the climate of
Cyprus for some.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
No, but you would expect that you know ultimately that
the market pull of batteries because it this represents a
huge opportunity for batteries. I mean, my team looks at
power market dynamics and one of the things I realized
as we've modeled batteries and prices together, is the biggest
opportunity for batteries is not the high prices in the
summer when the sun goes down. It's the cheap prices
(18:28):
when they can charge you know. I mean, obviously if
you look at their daily revenues from the wholesale market,
and obviously batteries make money in other ways. The most
profitable seasons are not when power prices are highest. It's
when power price is the lowest. So we're looking at Cyprus.
That's a huge opportunity that will presumably rebalance itself at
some point. And this is maybe a question, and you know,
(18:49):
I just say this more speculatively because this goes beyond
both of our own teams. I always wonder why we're
not seeing more industries popping up that make use of
insanely cheap or even negatively priced electricity that is available
some of the time. You know, I don't know what
this creative application is, but there has to be something
(19:10):
someone can do with free energy.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
I presume, well, it's a capex pub isn't it, Because
it is if.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
We're thinking in terms of all of the industrial applications
we can think of. I'm just saying there must be
some use for free energy that is only available some
of the time.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
I'm just I'm not asking expect.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
This question to be very low capex, because yes, you
can run a data center or something, but data centers
don't run for three or four hours a.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Day, right, So data centers aren't the answer. I guess
what I'm saying is we have kind of scoped out
what this has to look like. Has to be a
low capex industry that can benefit from free energy. Maybe
this industry doesn't yet exist. So listeners, especially those of
you at the start of your careers, you can come
up with something you can might get super rich.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
I mean, to make this electricity into heat, all you
need is a big one with some resistance. Right, So
if hardware is actually negative, you could probably make money
out of just having a really big wire and forcing
it down it. But you could also, for example, eat
up a big pile of salt or a pile of
water and store it for winter to run your district
heat it. That's being tried in some of the Scandinavian countries.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
That makes sense.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
There's also power to gas, but that is also quite
high topics for the futical companies.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah, and I also wonder if power to gas, from
my understanding, does it have the flexibility to be ramping
up and down all the time, which is a key
parameter here, I mean.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
Potentially, Yes, A hydrogen team seems to think that you
could have electoralizers that run for sort of four hours day,
so you could make hard I mean, you can make hydrogen,
but electoralizers are really expensive.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, that it violates the capex parameter that you put
in place exactly.
Speaker 4 (20:48):
But if you if you could make a really cheap,
even quite low efficiency electoralizer and trickle generate hydrogen, that
might be something work all right.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Well, anyway, putting it out there for everyone who's again,
particularly those of you who are entering into this space,
very cheap electricity some of the time represents a huge
opportunity for someone, so get creative. So I'm in the
US right now, and the US has a relatively new
government that has lots of ideas about the energy industry
(21:21):
and global trade, and this is manifesting itself in potentially
the rescinding of tax credits for various technologies, including solar.
Also in tariffs on imports, particularly anything that has been
touched by China. So, from your point of view of
someone looking at solar globally, how much of a big
(21:41):
deal is this? You know, seeing here it feels like
the deglobalization of solar is that to.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
A beretrant tom or people who are in America. So
the US market is about fifty two gigawats, the global
market is six hundred and ninety five gigawats this year.
China of that is three hund and sixty eighty. What's
so whether the US buys or not is not of
primary importance to people outside.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
The US, does it?
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Because my understanding of the situation prior to some of
these tariff changes is that, I mean, there were already
tariffs on Chinese solar.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
There were, So the US has had tariffs on Chinese
solar imports since twenty twelve, and in consequence, most of
the direct imports of solar components to the US don't
come from China at all. They came from South Southeast Asia,
four countries specifically, and recent rounds of tariffs, which were
actually proposed under the previous US government, put tariffs on
(22:36):
those four countries. So they're Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam,
and that does push up probably the price of supply
to the US market, but there are also more sweeping
import tariffs on everything.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I suppose this whole Southeast Asia as being a channel
for solar to come into the US from China via
Southeast Asia effectively, and these are Chinese companies operating in
Southeast Asia. My understand was that this little kind of
anomaly in the global industry was one of the few
(23:06):
areas where there was actually a healthy profit margin for
the solar manufacturers involved. So I suppose a question I
have is if that sort of loophole is now being closed,
does that have a significant impact on the solar industry.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
Well, a lot of these factory eat in Southeast Asia
will disclose on the companies that will take lots on them,
because it is true the US people love to pay
for things, and so solar modules in the US cost
about twenty seven US sense per what versus nine cents
outside the US. So yes, even though the costs slightly
higher to manufacturer in South East Asia, these were some
of the more profitable businesses.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
So stepping back, so I hear your message, This doesn't
really affect the global industry for solar that much.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
How do you see it affecting solar in the US.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
Well, I think it's going to hurt because, first of all,
there were a bunch of manufacturers who were setting up
sell factory EAT in the US because the Inflation and
Reduction app had some very specific, quite generous incentives for
manufacturing the US, which first of all could go away,
and secondly could be affected by one possible provision in
the latest One Big Beautiful Bill if it goes forward
(24:12):
as currently anticipated, in that it looks as if components
and materials from China might not be allowed for important
into the USS. And depending on how extensively that is prosecuted,
it may be quite difficult to make a solar module
using nothing contract.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Right, So, if the goal is to and I'm not
saying that this is a realistic goal before you shoot
it down, but let's just say, if the goal is
to cultivate a US solar manufacturing industry, there is maybe
a goldilocks zone of just the right amount of tariffing
where you create a dependence on stuff manufactured in the US,
(24:51):
but you still don't completely shut off that manufacturing having
what it needs, and what you're saying is it looks
like we might be going beyond that Goldilock zone at
the moment.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
Absolutely, it's also so unpredictable. You know, if you're a
company who's trying to decide whether to proceed with building
a high tapics factory in the US, you want to
be able to predict what the environment it's going to
be like in two to three years time. And the
country that's done that much better is India. India is
much more successful, it's establishing a domestic manufacturing industry US
(25:21):
just through being much more predictable.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Got it.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
That's such an important point. And I think something that
you know at bn EF, I know, since I joined,
we've been saying policy consistency is key. Policy inconsistency just
renders all policy ineffective unless the policy is to kill
something off. And I suppose that's maybe a real danger
for the US is the potential flip flopping means it's
(25:46):
impossible to incentivize anything exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
I mean, in some respects, the US has quite a
predictable business environment, as the Investment Tax Credit was guaranteed
for periods that frankly European product developers.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Would love to have.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
But it well, the latest government has just thrown everything
into the air, and who knows where the cars will
come down.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Well, we shall surely see.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
So Tom, I have a question for you. Since you've
been tracking US power markets, we see California as world
leading in terms of adoption. California has got what eleven
gigawatsa batteries, and a grid with peak demand it's about
fifty gigwatts that's got to be helping to integrate all this. Solda, right,
what's going on in California?
Speaker 1 (26:28):
I mean, it's really interesting what you see, and some
of this is more what we've seen in our modeling,
and we gradually see it taking shape in the market.
But you know, California is famous for its duck curve,
the shape of the power price throughout the day. And
I'm not going to be able to describe a duck
over the you know, let's just say that the power
(26:49):
price goes down, and then it goes up, and then
it goes down again.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
It kind of peaks in the.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Late afternoon, and that apparently looks like the head of
a duck when you put it.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
On a truck.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Because everyone's using air and after the sun goes down.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, absolutely, so, yeah, that's the typical profile.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
And the other country in my world, because I also
have the now the European Power Team reports to me,
it's very similar in Spain, which is the one country
in Europe where there's a decent amount of air conditioning.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
They have their own version of this.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
And the thing you see in markets like this as
you add in more storage to go with your solar
is the price throughout the day. It just becomes like binary.
There's a high price period and a low price period.
It's kind of flat because batteries like balance everything out
even within those places if you're assuming they're cycling once
a day, so you get a cheap period of the
day which is when solar is generating, and then a
(27:38):
more expensive period of the day when it's not. And
that's because if you were to add more batteries to
make it just an even price throughout the whole day,
then batteries wouldn't make any money, so no one would
add those batteries, So you're never going to have this
situation where it's just a consistent price throughout the day.
But it becomes just much more a two tone situation.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
The thing that's.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Interesting, though, is even in our forecast, we still see
days where there's not enough batteries to lap up all
the solar, and so I mean, I suppose what you'll
see is curtailment. So even with a lot of batteries,
you still have and this this goes back to what
I'm saying, You're still going to have those times where
electricity is insane nee che.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
But also times when it's the same expensive simply not really.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
I suppose this is the point is that I mean,
because let's say you've got enough batteries to soak up
the majority of an entire day's worth of solar, and
then you might have a period of a few hours
where prices would be really high. Well, then that's going
to be the hours where the majority of batteries is
going to be discharging to push that price down to
(28:41):
the level because they're always going to prioritize concentrating their
discharge in those hours. So I suppose what I'm saying
is batteries will make price dynamics a little bit less explosive.
They'll be a bit more boring, but it's going to
go from being all over the place and then maybe
a really high peak in the afternoon, which is what
you see in the sort of duck curve scenario to
just like on time and off time.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
That also been the batteries cannibalized there.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
Great point, and yeah, and that's exactly right. It's like
the total demand in a market sets a in a way,
a ceiling on how much solar you can take before
price cannibalization takes over. And then the total amount of
solar in the market creates a ceiling for how much
batteries the market can take. And so you know, this
(29:27):
is what you know batteries when you see them build anywhere.
It's like it follows on from solar. Solar creates the
opportunity for those batteries, and ultimately the amount of solar
you have in the market is the amount of opportunity
there is for batteries. You now, what the ideal ratio
between the two is is kind of depends on your assumptions.
But that's kind of how I see it from what
I'm seeing in markets. But yeah, the cannibalization of batteries
(29:47):
is a thing as well.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
I suppose what you could say with.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Batteries and that the price dynamics you see there is
it almost traces all the way back to where we
started the conversation. Solar is getting insanely cheap as manufacturers
are cannibalizing their own revenues, and the knock on effect
is that solar then is really cheap and getting built
in a lot of markets and therefore cannibalizing its own revenues,
which creates an opportunity for storage, which can pile in
(30:11):
and in turn cannibalize its own revenues, which means that
it's good in any of these spaces to either be
early or to have been early, because it might be
too late in some instances.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
And ultimately, I.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Would say all of this is, if this gets passed
down to consumer, a good thing, because more electricity will
cost less. Jenny, thank you very much for joining us.
Today's has been a really fascinating discussion.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Thank you very much. Tom.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Today's episode of Switched On was produced by Cam Gray
with production assistance from Kamala Shelling. Bloomberg NEF is a
service provided by Bloomberg Finance LP and its affiliates. This
recording does not constitute, nor should it be construed as
investment advice.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Investment recommendations, or a recommendation as to an investment or
other strategy Bloomberg ANIAF should not be considered as information
sufficient upon which to base an investment decision. Neither Bloomberg
Finance LP nor any of its affiliates makes any representation
or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of the
information contained in this recording, and any
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Liability as a result of this recording is expressly disclaimed
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