A sampling of the most recent quarterly results finds six of the top solar companies — Trina, Yingli Green, Canadian Solar, JA Solar, Jinko Solar, and Renesola — amassing nearly $3.365 billion in collective revenues. They shipped some 4.4 GW of product as well. All but Yingli and Renesola ended up with profitable quarters, in terms of net income, with Canadian emerging as the star performer for the quarter in terms of sales and earnings.

But the sum of their RD spending for the period — $49.2 million — represented an underwhelming 1.46 percent of those revenues. Only the RD expenditures by Yingli (3.09 percent) and Renesola (3.57 percent) even exceeded the 3 percent of revenues threshold, while Trina (0.89 percent), Jinko (0.9 percent) and Canadian Solar (0.35 percent) fell below 1 percent. Not exactly what one would call an RD arms race.

U.S. stalwarts First Solar and SunPower’s RD spends weren’t much larger last quarter. Although First Solar led the sector in its total research and development expenditures with just under $37.6 million, that amount still represented only 3.78 percent of its $889.3 million in quarterly revenues. SunPower’s $17.29 million in RD spending penciled out to about 2.6 percent of its $662.7 million in Q3 revenues.

Contrast these numbers with the latest figures from the aforementioned Intel and Applied Materials. Intel brought in $14.6 billion in revenue during its last quarter and spent $2.84 billion on RD (or 19.5 percent of revenues), while AMAT amassed $2.26 billion in sales and had an RD outlay of $360 million (or 15.9 percent of revenues).

Looked at another way, Applied — which still plays in the PV manufacturing equipment arena and counts many of the top companies above as customers — spent over seven times more on RD than the “Big 6” Chinese companies combined last quarter.

Intel and AMAT latest figures echo the semiconductor and adjacent high-technology sector mantra that a company must spend somewhere in the low to high teens of its revenues on RD, percentage-wise, to remain innovative and competitive in a rapidly evolving marketplace. Even when a high-tech company slides into the red and suffers net losses, the strong RD spending percentage tends to remain consistent — although a string of unprofitable quarters will certainly force some reductions in the innovation budget. 

The only example of a solar company that comes close to matching the high-tech level of RD expenditure is Enphase. The PV microinverter and energy management systems aces spent 12.2 percent of their Q3 revenues on technological innovation activities. (Disclosure: I have done some work for Enphase on behalf of my employer, Impress Labs.)

It may be unfair to compare the levels of solar RD spending by the top solar manufacturers with those of Intel, AMAT, and other true tech titans. The vast amounts of capital and technological acumen needed to develop and produce current and next-generation nanoscale semiconductors at volume dwarf those necessary for high-efficiency n-type solar cells or tandem-junction thin film panels — at least the capital part. You won’t find any $100 million process tools or $10 billion factories in the solar realm.

There are a couple other caveats to the comparisons made here. If one stripped out the downstream parts of the financial results of vertically integrated but still relatively tech savvy solar firms such as First Solar and SunPower and calculated the percentage of revenues spent on RD — a much more upstream-related line item — I suspect the numbers would rise closer to something resembling the more traditional techies. Also, companies like Trina and Yingli collaborate on some of their RD with research institutes, equipment companies and other partners, thus diffusing the total amount spent on a particular cell or module technology innovation. But I doubt that even if all of that work came in under their own budget that their RD percentages would come close to the tech industry benchmark.

Nonetheless, the next time a solar industry exec claims his or her company deserves to be called a “high-tech leader,” remind the speaker of the RD spending metric and call bullshit. Solar, for the most part, is not a high-tech business.

This article is an expanded version of a post that originally appeared at SolarCurator.com. Used with permission.

Lead image via Applied Materials