Taiwan firms reducing solar cell prices

The DigiTimes.com Bits + chips column, Taiwan solar cell makers reduce ASP by 3-6%, reports second tier solar cell manufacturers have reduced average selling prices in late November and early December 2006 citing PV (photovoltaic) industry conditions. Besides customer “requests” to lower prices, competition has increased because of aggressive global PV industry expansion. Meanwhile, E-Ton Solar Tech. Co., Ltd (TPO:3452) and Motech Industries Inc (TPO:6244) claim to have maintained pricing for different reasons.

DigiTimes.com goes on to quote Solarbuzz.com information from their Solar Module Price Environment page:

The latest quotes posted by solar industry observer SolarBuzz show that the ASP for solar modules in Europe shrank slightly whereas it remained flat in the US. The sources indicated that solar cells from Taiwan makers had dropped to US$3.10-3.20 per watt from the previous US$3.30.

Given the solar module inventory issues in Germany, I believe Solarbuzz’s current blended ASP approach is overestimating prices and just plain not capturing 5% to 15% solar module price decreases. Solarbuzz acknowledges issues with their current methodology which includes solar modules ranging from 5 Watts to 315 Watts:

As a result, Solarbuzz will now move to showing its main index on this site as new retail price index for modules 125 Watts and above (even though Solarbuzz will, as usual, continue to capture prices across the power spectrum).

Since Solarbuzz surveys retail prices, the Solar Module Index is tabulating list prices and may not be uncovering price reductions in the distribution channel.

So what happened to the Monkeysign blog? As reported in the Nanomech in Photovoltaics blog, Sad News: Monkeysign's Blog is Unavailable, going to http://blog.monkeysign.net/ results in 404 Not Found, The requested URL / was not found on this server. Could this just be a site upgrade or hosting service change? I invite the Monkeysign blogger to comment or submit a guest post; I will be happy to publish it.