> PV panels are the future of energy, so you need to have domestic factories no matter the cost.
Another benefit of domestic factories is domestic innovation. It's much harder for an engineer coming out of university and going through their career working at an office computer terminal to ever make a breakthrough innovation, if they can't step inside the factory to see how things are really done.
If that factory is down the street, it's much easier to do an apprenticeship, get a tour, or chat with the manager about their pain points. If it's in another country, you'll have to schedule a formal visit and you'll probably need to be a very important customer for that to happen.
Grad students coming out of a research lab would tend to focus on getting an extra 0.2% cell efficiency, but it's more likely that the innovation that makes PV competitive is something like reducing the scrap rate, or figuring out how to run cells through the QC machines more quickly.
Another benefit of domestic factories is domestic innovation. It's much harder for an engineer coming out of university and going through their career working at an office computer terminal to ever make a breakthrough innovation, if they can't step inside the factory to see how things are really done.
If that factory is down the street, it's much easier to do an apprenticeship, get a tour, or chat with the manager about their pain points. If it's in another country, you'll have to schedule a formal visit and you'll probably need to be a very important customer for that to happen.
Grad students coming out of a research lab would tend to focus on getting an extra 0.2% cell efficiency, but it's more likely that the innovation that makes PV competitive is something like reducing the scrap rate, or figuring out how to run cells through the QC machines more quickly.