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Well what an exciting week it has been in the world of finance.
I wonder if last week you spent most of your time scratching your head trying to work out how to recover your losses in savings and pensions that seemed to be being eroded on an hourly basis.
Alternatively, like me you could have begun to ponder what the next bubble was that is going to burst and how to avoid it.
Unfortunately, a strong bubble popping contender could well be the solar power sector.
While all our eyes were staring at plunging share prices and banking meltdowns the world's No.4 solar cell maker, Kyocera, was predicting that 80 percent of the companies in the solar industry could fail when prices of solar panels fall below the cost of making them. Is another meltdown on the cards?
Last week the head of Kyocera's solar operations, managing executive officer Tatsumi Maeda, told a press conference that the Japanese company has been wary of expanding solar panel production, preferring to wait for technology advances to lower the cost of converting solar power into electricity.
Kyocera was the first company to mass-produce polysilicon solar cells in 1982 so their opinion is always worth listening to.
The Japanese group, which currently trails Germany's Q-Cells, Japanese rival Sharp Corp and China's Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd, is facing growing price competition from its rivals, who have announced aggressive spending plans, pushing up the price of silicon, which is used to make most solar cells on the market.
According to Maeda the sector is in a bubble with many of the 200 or so solar power companies planning to ramp up capacity.
Demand for solar cells has soared on the back of higher oil prices and concerns over climate change. Government subsidies and incentives in various countries have helped inflate that bubble.
Maeda warned that: "The prices of solar panels need to fall to less than half of what they are now (for their use to spread without subsidies), and current technology doesn't make that commercially viable."
Premature investment in inefficient technologies was dangerous according to Maeda and he reckons the industry is in for large price falls.
Maeda said Kyocera is aiming to achieve grid parity - making the price of electricity households get from solar panels as cheap as conventional electricity - in five to six years.
Kyocera's rivals are counting on the production of thin-film solar cells to service the rising demand. The thin-film cells reduce production costs because they convert solar energy into electricity at a lower rate but use a fraction of the silicon needed by conventional solar cells.
Kyocera's existing solar modules currently convert 14 percent of solar energy into electricity and the company says it will not adopt thin-film technology until the conversion rate improves to 12 percent from the current levels of eight percent.
Are Kyocera being prudent or overly cautious?
The Japanese group is planning to more than double its solar cell output to 650 megawatts by March 2012. By comparison, the market leader, Q-Cells of Germany plans to ramp up capacity to 2,500 megawatts in 2010.
So which company would you like to back to recoup your losses of recent weeks? Go the wrong way and you look like losing yet another shirt.
Well if you are Warren Buffett, one of the world's investment gurus, what would you do?
It seems the guru has already spoken.
Last week MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., a subsidiary of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, announced plans to invest about $230 million in BYD Co., a Chinese car and battery maker. BYD claims to be the world's largest maker of nickel and lithium-ion batteries for cell phones, counting Nokia, Motorola and Samsung among its customers.
However, it appears that what has sparked Buffett's interest is the Chinese company's battery developments for storing solar and wind power.
Oh well you have to speculate to accumulate.
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