“The top-tier Chinese firms are kind of the benchmark now,’’ said Shayle Kann, a managing director of solar studies at GTM Research, a renewable energy market analysis firm in Boston.
Pricing of solar equipment is determined by the Chinese industry, he said, “and everyone else prices at a premium or discount to them.’’
Besides Solyndra, the other two US manufacturers that filed for bankruptcy protection in August were Evergreen Solar Inc., of Marlborough, Mass., and SpectraWatt, a Hopewell Junction, N.Y., company. Another company, BP Solar, halted manufacturing at its complex in Frederick, Md., last spring.
Those bankruptcies and closings represent almost one-fifth of the solar panel manufacturing capacity in the United States, according to GTM Research.
Solyndra and Evergreen in particular suffered because they pursued unusual technologies whose competitiveness depended on their using less polysilicon, the main material for solar panels. That has become less important because polysilicon prices have tumbled more than 80 percent in the past three years as output has caught up with demand.
Analysts say that two US companies remain strongly placed. One is First Solar, the largest American manufacturer, which uses a different technology but has its biggest factory in Malaysia.
The other, SunPower, is much smaller but is an industry leader in the efficiency with which its panels convert sunlight into electricity, so that they sell at a premium to Chinese panels.
But with Beijing heavily supporting its industry, the Chinese companies are forging ahead.
“There is no question that renewable energy companies in the United States feel pressure from China,’’ said David B. Sandalow, assistant secretary at the Energy Department. “Many of them say it is cheap capital, not cheap labor, that gives Chinese companies the main competitive advantage.’’
