``A Fourth Solar Company Files for Bankruptcy`` Market forces at work?

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Wed, 09/07/2011 - 10:00.

 

 After receiving subsidies of millions of dollars in public money, Evergreen Solar, located in Massachusetts, and Solyndra, located in Fremont, California have filed for bankruptcy.    A third company, Spectra Watt which had not been subsidized and was supported by Intel, also filed.  You can read the NY Times report here.  A fourth company Solon, in Arizona, a subsidy of a German solar panel producer, also stopped production of panels. 
 
What is going on here?  Are these bankruptcies being facilitated by legacy energy competitors or  other governments behind the scenes?  
 
Right at precisely the time (because of the need to reduce global warming, the need for domestic employment, the need to rely less on foreign and fossil fuels) solar power should be being widely adopted by large (commercial buildings) and small (residential) energy producers – instead solar panel producing factories are closing and filing for bankruptcy. 
 
You couldn't script more pathetic timing for solar panel factories to shut.
 
How is it each of these four companies, and the employees and entrepreneurs behind them, made decisions which put them out on a financial limb – and then the sales and/or further financial support just dried up?
 
If you were a coal company, a nuclear generator, or a gas driller – boy you couldn’t write a a more embarrassing script for “green” solar photovoltaics. 
 
Is it really the reduction in the world cost of silicon crystal that contributed to the demise of the three companies?  Chinese just do it so much cheaper?
 
The fellows who started Evergreen Solar about 15 years ago - with their MIT developed “string ribbon” ultra thin silicon production technique – seemed like they were really on a very efficient path – check out the technique on the Evergreen website here. 
 
But Evergreen couldn’t cut it with the production of it’s panels in the US, even after being supplied with millions of dollars in public money.   Evergreen stated that it could not produce panels in the US which were competitive with its Chinese production.   Why not?
 
What’s the problem? 
 
Most of the production today is robotic – how can robots operate more inexpensively in China than here in the US when cost for labor is not the issue?
 
Is there something more sinister than supply and demand at work here?
 
 
 
 

 

 

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Solyndra is being investigated by the FBI and the Energy Departm

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Tue, 09/13/2011 - 09:03.

 The Center for Public Integrity reports here on their iwatch site that  Solyndra is being investigated by the FBI and the Energy Department Inspector General. 

The sudden closing of Solyndra is very weird.    Could this be a large scale set up in the war between conventional energy and solar, between republicans and dems, between manufacturing nations?   

Solyndra update

Submitted by Gone Fishin on Sun, 10/09/2011 - 21:29.

E-Mail Shows Senior Energy Official Pushed Solyndra Loan

WASHINGTON — A senior Energy Department official pushed hard for the government’s $535 million loan to the now-bankrupt California solar energy company Solyndra even after he had disclosed that his wife’s law firm represented the company and he had promised to recuse himself from matters related to the loan application, according to e-mails provided to Congressional investigators by the administration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/us/politics/e-mail-shows-senior-energy-official-pushed-solyndra-loan.html

Most Multi Millionaires are EXPERTS at going "BANKRUPT!"

Submitted by ANGELnWard14 on Wed, 09/14/2011 - 00:14.

It's a well known fact that smart "entreprenuers" often go bankrupt early on... Many of these "STRAW" corporations had a plan in advance....TOP HEAVY ADMINISTRATION COSTS always subject them to low profit and inability to be sustained... NO big deal, they get the Federal funds and then close up shop with no hardships to their personal lives...This cycle is a "GAME" for big players... And it goes on everyday.

Always Appreciative, "ANGELnWard14"

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