maniclion

That's how it's been for a long time cheap products no matter how cheaply made so everyone could keep up with the Jones', but I think when money gets tight people will start thinking in terms of how long the products they buy will last, it's what happened in the car industry people wanted a car they knew wouldn't start falling apart after the warranty, American cars didn't offer that, Japanese and European cars did. A lot of the Japanese and some of the European cars are being built in the US.

In the solar market some of the Best products are being made in the US, the Engineers do their best to make sure the products will last.....now that REC and BP solar, both European companies, have started having problems people are going to start to worry about the super cheap Chinese modules that have been flooding the market. These things are working at Arc Welding voltages, going cheap is very dangerous yet it has been the trend in the last year and I foresee bad things....

BP just had their modules burn down one of the largest Roof-top installations in the world. It was on a group of warehouses in Germany. Cheaply made junction boxes are the culprit, I wouldn't be surprised if they sourced them from China.

Rec has to recall all of their modules from 2007 or 2008 I can't remember but it was 420,000 modules, very expensive......

Here's the official statement: Translated from Norwegian
Rec must replace every solar panel they sold ifjor and parts of 2007, writes Dagens Næringsliv.

This means that all of the approximately 420,000 affected solar panels need to be taken down from solparker and roofs and repaired or replaced.

Rec notified of the error on a tiny little link in solar panels in March. Then, the cost estimate to correct the errors 60 million. For around a week ago was the amount six doubled to 360 million, but the company said the number of panels that had to be replaced or how many panels that were covered by the error.

- Each panel must be turned down and taken indoors for repair, or replaced with new. It is therefore the cost is so high. This is a boring thing for us, but we have received positive feedback from customers for the way we deal with the matter on, says Recs deputy chief executive and responsible for Rec Solar, John Andersen Jr., to DN.

-Very serious for REC
The panels are produced by Recs currently only solcellepanel factory in Arvika in Sweden.

A 20-century employees in Rec is set aside for the project, while subcontractors to perform repair work, as Andersen estimates will be nearly completed by the end of the year.



Folks are going to have to learn the hard way that buying cheap shit will cost them in the end, when their homes burn down because the bought the cheapest 80" Flat Screen made in China who used the wrong solder on a power supply circuit board and it melted catching the plastic shell on fire........
I know, because I am a tech guy, the potential for catastrophic failure in the simplest gadgets the general public doesn't.......

"We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Natures inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."
Thomas Edison: In conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone

Big Smoothy

Yes, when it comes to many products. Perhaps most products. The "Wal-Mart" stuff.

For TVs, and vehicle, yes.

The US will never get back into manurfacturing. Never.

Wages, L & I, Unemployment benefits, safesty codes (OSHA), medical insurance costs, etc.

Manufacturing in the US is done. It won't ever come back. Same for Korea and Japan. It's in China, Vietnam, and elsewhere.

Military men are dumb, stupid animals, to be used as pawns for foreign policy
– Henry Kissinger (January-February 2003 edition of Eagle Newsletter)