FSLR’s Solar farm in Mongolia

We are Greenworldinvestor have chronicled how First Solar’s (FSLR) massive solar farm to be built in Mongolia was a non-starter right from the beginning. The plant which was announced in 2009 was just a gesture by the Chinese, to show USA that they would also help the US industry grow. The massive farm faced problems right from the start. It got bigger and bigger with large Chinese solar companies protesting the award to a USA company First Solar. Though the Chinese have built giant farms in recent years, First Solar’s project has remained on paper only. The Chinese have been reluctant to fund a farm built with foreign made solar panels. The Chinese solar market effectively remains a domestic monopoly with very few imports. I don’t think that even 1% of the massive 12 GW a year solar market in China is being met through imports.

The Chinese created giant domestic solar companies through huge investments in land, capital, low utility prices etc. These companies backed by the Chinese government captured the world markets in 3-4 years. All the subsidy schemes of foreign governments were exhausted, as the Chinese supplied unlimited quantities of solar products at super cheap prices. This led to their dominance and bankruptcy of foreign companies. Other governments woke up too late to do anything much and the duties have not resulted in spurring their dying companies. Except for USA, China and Taiwan now completely dominate the world markets.

The ostensible reason given for First Solar giving up, is pricing but I think that the Chinese government was never interested in pushing this project. First Solar remains absent from the Chinese market completely, despite being amongst the top 3 solar panel suppliers in the world. The Chinese have through implicit restrictions kept their own market aside for their own companies only. They first created these giant companies by exploiting the foreign governments. Now that they are huge and dominant, the government has created a large domestic market for them to exploit.

Bloomberg

First Solar Inc. (FSLR) won’t be building the world’s largest solar plant in China after more than four years of negotiations on pricing failed to produce an agreement. “Due to the market environment, we aren’t going to pursue the Ordos project further,” Krum said today in an interview. The plant was never included in the company’s pipeline of contracted projects, he said.