The solar manufacturing boom in China and the domestic competition for market share are prompting some manufacturers of solar components to sacrifice quality for the sake of higher profits, an executive at the world’s largest solar manufacturer has said. “We’ve noticed that people have started to sacrifice quality to cut costs, which is a dangerous signal,” Zhong Baoshen, chairman of Longi Green Energy Technology Co.
China leads globally in solar components manufacturing and holds an 8095% share of the supply chains in the industry, depending on the manufacturing segment. Faced with cheap imports from China, the U.S. and the EU are looking to support their own supply chains and manufacturers, whose panels are more expensive, and often, with higher quality than the Chinese ones.