It looks likely that a U.S. government investigation into the pricing of solar panels by companies in China will find that they are selling below cost, perhaps aided by government support.

A source involved in the investigation, which is part of a trade dispute initiated by a complaint from seven U.S. solar panel makers, says that analysis of available data suggests that the costs of making the solar panels are higher than the prices companies in China are selling them for. They're able to survive, he says, because they have better balance sheets than their competitors, and can afford to sell at a loss, at least temporarily.

The results of the study are being prepared for publication, and could be out next month. The U.S. solar panel makers who asked for the investigation have asked the U.S. government to impose tariffs that would double the price of solar panels imported from China, saying that unfair pricing has hurt their ability to be profitable. The U.S. Department of Commerce is expected to announce its initial findings, and its decision about imposing a tariff, as early as this month. The top solar panel manufacturers in China have denied any wrong-doing, and the Chinese government is threatening to apply tariffs of its own on solar panel related materials and equipment imported from the U.S..

Whatever the facts of the case prove to be, if large tariffs are applied to solar panels from China, what will this mean for innovation in solar power, and the ultimate goal of achieving affordable solar power?

Some, including the prominent solar researcher Martin Green, have argued that trade barriers will stymie innovation. He says that remarkable reductions in the cost of solar panels have been the result of innovations coming from countries around the world. Cheap solar, he says, depends on taking advantage of what each country has done best, whether that be making solar cell materials, the equipment for manufacturing solar panels, or actually manufacturing the solar panels themselves.

Other experts have argued that unfair pricing is hurting some of the most innovative solar panel manufacturers, forcing them out of business.

While tariffs could help keep solar panel makers afloat in the United States, they could hurt other U.S. companies. China currently imports large amounts of solar cell materials and manufacturing equipment from the U.S.. If China imposes retaliatory tariffs, it could hurt the companies that sell to China. These include innovative companies such as GT Advanced Technologies, which is lowering the cost of solar power by inventing better ways to make the crystalline silicon used in most solar panels.

The impact on innovation could also depend upon the extent to which companies in China are themselves innovating. Most of their success so far has had to do with their ability to finance, and quickly build, solar cells that use the latest available equipment. But some have started to make significant improvements to solar cell manufacturing and solar cell design. Many Chinese solar companies are themselves going out of business due to the difficult market for solar panels, and the tariffs could hurt those that depend on the U.S. market. 

BP Solar, which has roots going back decades to the early days of solar panel manufacturing, can't compete in a difficult solar panel market, so it's closing its doors, according to reports. It joins a number of other solar manufacturers, including famously the U.S. government-backed Solyndra, that have failed during difficult times for the solar industry.

According to the Financial Times,

"The continuing global economic challenges have significantly impacted the solar industry, making it difficult to sustain long-term returns for the company," wrote Mike Petrucci, chief executive of BP Solar, in an internal email to staff last week.

"Over the last six months we have realised that we simply can't make any money from solar," a spokesman confirmed.

No doubt a number of factors contributed to its demise. Chinese manufacturers have driven down the cost of making solar panels, making it difficult for established companies to compete. (See my new feature, "The Chinese Solar Machine"). The growth of Chinese manufacturing capacity has contributed to an oversupply of panels caused prices to collapse.

But just as important is BP's failure to capitalize on its own innovations. One of its own researchers, Nathan Stoddard, invented a new way to make silicon wafers for solar cells that could dramatically cut the cost of high efficiency silicon solar panels. But the company dragged its heals and never commercialized the technology. Manufacturers in China, developed their own versions of the advance and beat the company to it. (See: "How BP Blew Its Chance to Spearhead a Solar Innovation.")

Lightning is a powerful manifestation of the electrical charge that can accumulate in the atmosphere. New research, presented at the ACS meeting in Boston on Wednesday, suggests that it might be possible to harness that electrical charge.

Fernando Galembeck, of the University of Campinas in Brazil, has shown that water vapor in humid air can accumulate charge and transfer it to materials it comes in contact with. He says it might be possible to design collectors that exploit this behavior to generate electricity. The technology, which he calls "hygroelectricity" could provide an alternative to solar power in places without much sunlight but with a lot of humidity. It could also be used to prevent lightning strikes, he says, by draining electrical charge out of the air. He notes, however, that the research is very early stage and that such technology could be a long time coming.

Here's the abstract from his paper:

Many experimental reports associate water-air interfaces with electrostatic phenomena, from "steam electricity" recorded in the 19th century and Kelvin water drop condenser to the close association between heavy clouds and thunderstorms. However, accepted physical-chemical mechanisms for charge build-up and dissipation at water-air interfaces are still lacking. This report shows that: 1) water vapor adsorption on dielectrics or isolated metal surfaces enclosed within a shielded and grounded environment causes charge accumulation on the solid, depending on the relative humidity (RH), nature of the substrate and exposure time. 2) A steep charge increase is observed in liquid and solid insulators under the action of external fields when RH approaches 100%. These results are in agreement with the hypothesis of water acquiring charge during adsorption and condensation, due to partition of aqueous ions.