Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2020-01-27)

◼ TECHNOLOGY January 27, 2020

22

Trump’s Titanic Gift to

China’s Solar Makers

● TheWhiteHouseputan easily

exploitedloopholein itstariffs, and the

efforttoundoit hasbeenheld up in court

theirU.S.-aimedproductlines.A tradecourthas

temporarilyblockedtheWhiteHouse’seffortsto

killtheexemption.Trumpis expectedtodecideas

soonasnextmonth,aspartofa scheduledreview,

whethertomaketheotherwise-harshsolartariffs

evenharsher.TradeadviserPeterNavarrohassaid

“theloopholeforbifacialsolarpanelsChinais cur-

rentlyexploitingneedstobeslammedshut.”The

WhiteHousedeclinedtocomment.

Solarpower isoneof America’s cheapest

sourcesofelectricity,andinstallingit isoneof

itsfastest-growing occupations. Chinese com-

panies’ cheap panels are a big reason: “They’ve

lowered the price of solar for the whole world,”

says Noah Kaufman, a Columbia economist with a

focus on global energy policy. They also crowded

routes more efficient. And fishermen have used

it to receive weather updates and help with auc-

tions for their catch. “There are 300,000 motor-

ized fishing boats, and they are away for at least

seven days at a time,” says Mahantesh Patil, Skylo’s

vice president of sales in South Asia. “They want

to know which fish are in demand at the markets

and where to move if a typhoon is coming.” Other

customers might include small farmers, who could

coordinate tractor rentals during busy harvest sea-

sons and even track the temperatures of animal

vaccines or bull semen in transit to confirm that

the precious cargo stays within the range needed

to keep it viable.

Rajesh Agrawal, a board member of Indian

Railways, has overseen the testing of Skylo on pas-

senger cars and says freight cars are soon to fol-

low. “India is a vast country with dead zones all

over where we might lose connections for up to an

hour,” he says. Skylo has enabled passenger cars

to steadily report their speed, direction, and any

maintenance concerns like, say, a slipping wheel.

Agrawal says the plan is to order thousands of hubs

in the coming years.

Skylo will have to contend with plenty of com-

petition. The companies promising to deliver their

own low-cost data networks this year include a host

of satellite startups that won’t have to worry about

For most of the past year, there’s been a big hole in

President Trump’s China tariffs—one in the shape

of a solar panel. Companies that build America’s

majorsolarfarmsspent 2018 andearly 2019 beg-

gingtheadministrationtoexemptjumboversions

oftwo-sided“bifacial”panelsusedtocreate vast,

utility-scale solar farms. Relatively few bifacials

are made domestically. For some reason, when

the administration finally agreed to issue an

exemption, it was much broader thantheindustry

hadsuggested.Sobroad,infact,thatit reshaped

themarketandleftChinese panelmakersas

dominantasever.

Since June, all bifacial panels have been

tariff-free, and Chinese panel makersareturn-

ing the once-niche design into a cornerstone of

theobstaclesfacedbymiddlemen.CEOTrivedi

contendsthatSkylo,whichwillbemorewidely

availablethissummer,willremaincheaperbyusing

existingsatellitesratherthanbuildingoutinfra-

structureandthatitsrivalscan’tmatchhisantenna

technology.“Ourprices,”hesays,“willbelowand

consistentaroundtheworld.”�AshleeVance

THE BOTTOM LINE For less than $100, Skylo is promising its

hubs can make a wide range of devices and objects capable of

taking advantage of short bursts of internet data.

◀ Signal analyzers

waiting to be tested at

Skylo’s lab in San Mateo