the vast majority of solar panels are imaculately concieved in fully automated factorys,some where in fact there are NO people and they turn the lights off, as the robots are blind to those frequencys anyway. surviving solar PV production facilities operate on razor thin margins, and gargantuan volumes, the results of which are the electrification of most of the world, useing the absolute minimum of carbon. first lights, and dev8ces, small appliences, then the next step will be universal access to clean water and refrigeration, and then the worlds largest continent will be something to recon with.

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Incipient 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is a very rosy picture, unfortunately to the point of delusion. There are huge questions about the labour used in various stages, and the production of some of the raw materials is environmentally questionable.

	▲	epolanski 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but most of it happens in countries beyond china. In any case, I literally have a cousin who's lived ten years in China building a 3d printing company, and the last reason he went to China was cheaper labor, that was borderline irrelevant.

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zer00eyz 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> the vast majority of solar panels are imaculately concieved in fully automated factorys

What?

https://insights.issgovernance.com/posts/forced-labor-in-the...

Yes there is a bunch of automation in there, and still a ton of manual work and re-work. And it is done by the lowest cost labor, with a hefty government subsidy (by china) and a purchasing program.

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cyberax 10 hours ago | parent [-]

This is pretty much bunk. There really is _very_ little space for manual unqualified work in solar panel manufacturing.

Does the supply chain contain less-than-free labor somewhere? Likely. Most probably somewhere in the raw material production, but it's not something that is a deciding factor in anything. These materials just as well likely go into making of iPhones and Lenovo laptops.

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zer00eyz 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Unloading, Frame assemblies, testing, Cleanup of any failed products (this is skilled labor)... Packaging and loading. This is at the plant that does panel assembly (joining silicon to packaging).

The problem is that "Highly automated" does not mean "free of people" ... the demand for low skill labor (and a fair amount of it to keep up with automated processes) is still required.

The cost of labor in china remains so low (on the whole) that these things are still not only feasible but cost effective.

	▲	bad_haircut72 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeh USA could doninate this if only the price of a guy to load panels onto a truck wasnt so high /obvious sarcasm