Monday, December 1, 2008

PV market saturation and manufacturer ownership

two things:

1) if a PV manufacturer is concerned with product quality rather than maximizing market share (remember that markets are psuedo spatially defined, i.e. a market could be in a town, state, nation, region, global etc...) why wouldn't they focus on maxizing their product output to a given region: the benefits would be twofold: first Energy shares would be increased as a fraction of a regional energy grid: i.e the PV manufacturer would approach market saturation within their zone of influence: i.e. the range of their distribution network:

and 2) by decreasing the size of the distribution network the producere minimizes time to delivery and allows manufacturers to reclaim products at reduced cost: as well as facilitating regional loyalty to their product AND optimizing their product (PV and supporting network/local infrastructure) for the regional conditions...

there is a caveat to the above two propositions:
PV manufacturers would have to transfer their business philosophy to service provision rather than product sales: i.e. the PV manufacturer would sell the energy of their panels to the consumer (at comparable current market rates) rather than the panel itself (i.e. manufacturer maintains ownership of the panel creating incentive to make the panel durable (without legal fees and other troubles of warranty creation and enforcement) and to constantly improve the product (i.e the company Directly reaps increased profit from an increased Quality product)... similar to the ideas laid out in Lovin's Natural Capitalism...

at pure Interactions we could do a similar deal with solar thermal set ups: the problem to solve would be attaining infrastructure to own/recycle and improve solar thermal technology...rather than just fulfilling traditional roles of contracting: however, perhaps the panel/heat tube manufacturers would be willing to retain ownership while we provide the service of optimized site design and contracted installation; as well as verification of installation quality; a pure interactions certification if you will....