Above, 2022 American Silver Eagles. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
"You're not going to go and melt grandmother's silver tea service at $35 an ounce."
Since silver is an important "ingredient" in solar panels, it's a wonder why the metal hasn't risen much higher than it has. A friend has solar panels at his house. We joke that we should undertake a guerilla operation to scrape the solar panels for the silver.
Right now, silver's spot price is hovering around $23/toz.
Along with solar panels, silver has other industrial uses. One even has silver inside their cell phones.
From BullionVault:
Today silver is invaluable to solder and brazing alloys, batteries, dentistry, glass coatings, LED chips, medicine, nuclear reactors, photography, photovoltaic (or solar) energy, RFID chips (for tracking parcels or shipments worldwide), semiconductors, touch screens, water purification, wood preservatives and many other industrial uses.
According to Kitco News, silver's prices need to go higher to meet solar demand.
They wrote:
(Kitco News) - Investment demand in silver has been fairly disappointing through most of 2023; however, one mining executive said that this is not the segment of the market investors should be paying attention to.
In an interview with Kitco News, on the sidelines of the London Bullion Market Association 2023 Global Precious Metals Conference, Phillips Baker, CEO of Hecla Mining, said that investors need to pay attention to industrial demand and the solar power sector continues to consume massive amounts of the precious metal.
"Right now, ETF demand is the sideshow. Silver's use in Photovoltaic (PV) solar panels is going to drive silver prices higher," he said. "This is not an issue that will be going away anytime soon. The need for Photovoltaic solar panels will drive demand for the next decade.
The bullish comments come as silver prices test resistance just below $23 an ounce, up 9.5% from September's multi-month lows below $21 an ounce.
According to data from the Silver Institute, in the last decade, silver demand has grown 150%. Last year, 140 million ounces of silver was used in solar panels. There are expectations that 160 million ounces will be used in solar panels this year, a 28% increase from last year.
To read more, go here.
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