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Solar Company Folds After $0.5B In Subsidies
First time accepted submitter dusanv writes "Solyndra, a Silicon Valley solar energy firm, subsidized to the tune of $500 million and held as a 'gleaming example of green technology,' announced bankruptcy yesterday. 1,100 employees fired."
It's too bad that Good Thoughts won't help these companies out. It's the call of filthy lucre by the Big Oil and Big Energy companies killing off most of the alternative energy sources.
There, of course, is that one big exception: NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS.
It's no surprise that Big Energy's "alternative baby" of nuclear power still exists. They get billions of dollars of government money to create these Radiation Mountains flood us with their high energy radioactivity.
Ask any reputable Chiropractor about how radiation causes serious subluxations due to DNA malformation. There's a strong correlation between the number of Chiropractic offices in a given area and its proximity to a nuclear power plant. The Doctors don't see just radiated plant workers, they see school kids, parents, teachers, ministers... all sorts of people who don't work in the nuclear plants but have subluxations throughout their nervous system. I don't work near one of those but colleagues at conferences and through FaceBook will tell me about it.
Take care,
Bob.
Chiropractic Saves Lives!
Before anyone jumps to the conclusion that green technology is not profitable and therefore a big scam, or a modern religion if you will, with all of its guilt, shame and asking for money, let me state an opinion that might not be popular here: Maybe, just maybe, the subsidies was too low? I know what you think but let me play an evil's advocate for a second. How much the fresh air is worth to you? To your children? To your children's children? To your children's children's grandchildren? Well, you get the idea. And what about fresh water? What about cold weather? I am not saying that all of those things should be worth more than 500 billion to everyone but I suggest that we have to account for them in the business plans of companies developing green technology. We have to ask ourselves: Why do we develop green technology? How much money are we willing to waste? What sacrifices are we willing to make? What do we expect to get in return? Those are the most important questions that we should at least try to answer.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
This place has been going downhill fast since Taco left.
Led, of course, by Salon's Andrew Leonard, for whom no amount of subsidy is ever enough, and no amount of state intervention can possibly suffice. The reality is far different, of course, and starts with the lousy energy density of solar; but we are dealing with a very heavily government-controlled "market" that is steadily eroding as subsidies decline. The myth of green jobs is something like promising to feed people with tasty barbecued unicorn ribs.
Dog is my co-pilot.
...that this is the company that Obama visited when he was on his renewable energy tour. I guess this is a symbol for how well those policies worked out. We really should be supporting these kinds of companies, not throwing our money at foreign oil/power interests.
The market will not necessarily support what is good for society, it will only support what is profitable. This company was even given a head start by the government and still couldn't make it. It's very unfortunate that the destructive libertarian argument that the government should stop spending money and let the private sector work it out seemingly has so much traction.
This is what happens when science-ignorant politicians allocate public funds out of political concerns instead of scientific merit.
"Green" subsidies have become a talking point for grandstanding in speeches.
Money gets allocated to good photo-ops at politically-connected corporations in politically important districts rather than to transformative research laboratories at institutions of higher education.
All of these greenwashed corporatist handouts and loan guarantees need to stop. If professors want to write a grant and back it up with research already conducted, and be willing to assign the royalties to the public, then we can talk about subsidies.
What we saw here was corporate welfare, not a research grant.
I know we're trying to be sensational here, but my internal copy editor is yelling that the story uses $0.5B instead of the more appropriate $500M.
China's solar energy companies seem to be doing fine, subsidy or no subsidy.
An experimental business in an emergent technology fails to establish itself in a collapsing economy. Read all about it...
Give me a break folks, them and a whole bunch of other companies both old and new... Stop trying to make.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
“It is clear that Solyndra was a dubious investment,” representatives Fred Upton, of Michigan, and Cliff Stearns, of Florida, said in a joint statement. The company “is just the latest casualty of the Obama administration’s failed stimulus.”
Meanwhile China continues to invest is loss incurring businesses and technologies to under-cut and eradicate the competition.
Dear Princess Obama:
Today I learned that you can't use legislation to force technology or change principles of chemistry and physics, no matter how heavy the subsidy, or from whom the subsidy money is coerced, or how many people who didn't vote for you which you blame. I also learned that economic practicality will trump blind idealism every time, as one is grounded in reality and the other in denial of reality. When a technology is ready and feasible, marketplace forces will ensure its rapid adoption if it is, in fact, superior as claimed. However, no matter how good the intent, a technology that is not ready cannot be forced upon the public.
Your faithful tax-sucking green-liberal Pollyanna,
Solyndra Sparkle
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
I know, I know, YDRTFA, but the article mentioned LOTS of reasons this company went out of business that had nothing to do with the death of Green Technology. Among other things, it couldn't compete with larger, foreign rivals; the technology itself (cylindrical solar "panels") wasn't scalable; falling panel prices; and weak demand (like much of the economy, btw).
I have no idea whether in fact any of those things are, in fact, true. However, they seem more reasonable than the "Green Technology is not going to work, end all subsidies" schtick of some of the above commenters.
So we have about 312,026,572 people in America, roughly 53% of them pay taxes (which is insane btw). The investment was 500 million. If my math is correct all 165,374,083 of us tax payers deserve to get a $3.02 tax write off on this bs just to stick it to the man for them making poor business decisions with our money. Boooo big gov.
And this is a prime example of why government subsidies of production are a bad idea. I haven't firmly settled on a position with regards to federal funding for R&D (although certain examples, like sick shrimp running on treadmills, should be an obvious choice for budget cuts...), but trying to force adoption through subsidies only distorts the market, without adding any value.
In this case, the US Government effectively forced every US citizen to invest $1.60 in a company that had never been profitable and showed no prospects for profitability. The investment was not for development of technology that would make solar power economically viable, but rather it was for purchasing capital equipment for existing, uneconomic technology. The results were perfectly predictable. If no private investors see the value in the company, we should be thinking awful hard about whether it's a good idea to force them to invest in it anyway.
I would love to see solar power prove profitable, but such a goal will come as a result of research and development, not as a result of government subsidies for production of inefficient technology.
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It's what I'd like to see the Feds use to go over the CxO compensation records and reports. I'm all for advancing technology and helping out, but if they guys at the top managed to walk away with more than $150-200k/year in total compensation, I would like to see them brought up on fraud charges for accelerating the demise of a company which used federal guarantee dollars.
Now, if it was all on the up and up, and they suffered with the masses, I'd be inclined to be more lenient. CxOs of start-ups should get no more than their highest paid technical employee until the company becomes profitable. Anything else, imo, is mismanagement of company resources.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That is because the competition is artificially cheap. If all forms of energy were in a true free market, then alternative forms may very well be more competitive.
Currently we are not pricing in the total cost of the energy which would include the environmental pollution.
A very good discussion of this is covered in this interview with Ron Paul
http://www.grist.org/article/paul1
So, I live (literally) around the corner from one of Solyndra's offices. And one thing I noticed is that, no matter when I left for work in the morning, drove out to the grocery store, or took the kids on a Sunday walk to the park, Solyndra's parking lot was always full and the lights were on in every laboratory.
At first, I was fairly intimidated. I was new to the Valley, and wondered if this was the pace I would be expected to keep for my employer. After a few months, though, I realized that Solyndra was the exception, not the norm, and not even the more hardcore start-ups in my field matched the hours their employees put in.
As I watched their work pattern, I wondered at the office culture that would lead to such employee behavior, as well as the pay and benefits that had to be backing it up. I could never shake the uneasy impression that Solyndra was vigorously burning the candle at both ends, with potentially disastrous consequences in store.
Steady as she goes, I guess. Even in Silicon Valley.
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
What kind of moron does it take to burn through 500 million and 1100 employees without discovering the answer to the question "Can I make one solar panel and sell it at a profit" somewhere along the line?
ABC News did a story on May 24th, which discusses how the Obama Administration "bypassed procedural steps meant to protect taxpayers as it hurried to approve an energy loan guarantee to a politically-connected California solar power startup", and how the loan "benefited a company whose prime financial backers include Oklahoma oil billionaire George Kaiser, a "bundler" of campaign donations. Kaiser raised at least $50,000 for the president's 2008 election effort."
The summary is misleading. The company was given $500 million in loan guarantees. That doesn't necessarily mean a subsidy. If the company went broke and never got the loans no government money was spent.
Reading through the Solyndra web site, there's the following announcement of the departure of their Founder and CEO
http://www.solyndra.com/2011/08/chris-gronet-takes-on-advisory-role-for-solyndra/
from August 18th, about 2 weeks ago. Coincidence? Founder / CEOs don't normally leave after the first 5 years of a startup. Is there more to the bankruptcy story than what's in the OP's article?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Current National Debt =~ 14.7 Trillion Dollars
Debt per Citizen =~ 47,000 Dollars
Debt per TaxPayer =~ 131,000 Dollars
US National Spending: 3.6 Trillion Dollars
US Federal Budget Deficit: 1.3 Trillion Dollars
Source: http://www.usdebtclock.org/
China is subsidizing their solar panel industry so that when solar finally gets traction, they will be in the driver's seat. Of course, it helps that they're less concerned about dumping waste and paying western-level wages.
It sounds, though, that this particular process was doomed to failure from the beginning, since the manufacturing process turned out not to be "scalable".
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Looks like this was a "shovel ready" project. Get the shovels out and bury the company.
One of the major investors in this company was bundler of campaign contributions for Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign and a significant contributor himself. Additionally, the Energy Department failed to follow proper procedure before anouncing that this company was getting loan guarantees.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
How's that hole in your foot? Painful?
This company, at the time the government made the loan, was a leader. Now, after a couple of years of other companies being helped by government loans and other subsidies, it's no longer a leader.
Private investment wasn't going anywhere near solar back then. All the money was being dumped into oil companies, which is where the profits are.
Because of government investment in multiple facets of solar technology, this one type of solar technology was found not to be the best. The others are doing better.
>What we saw here was corporate welfare, not a research grant.
So you'll be calling your representatives and telling them to end tax breaks for rich people and corporations, and subsidies for agribusiness?
Go for it.
We know where the sun is -- the prospecting costs are zero!
Yet solar still can't compete without enormous subsidies.
And to the end users of oil, the subsidies are negated by taxes. Yet solar demands subsidy at both production/capital costs (as in this case) and in production (in the form of feed-through tariffs).
Try again.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Yea, too low. Before being crazy enough to say that you could at least research and report what portion of that half billion bucks the owners paid themselves in wages and bonuses and perks. Of course, by your way of thinking you could argue that they were going to steal half a billion bucks anyway, so we should have given them a billion or more to make sure they did something useful with a portion of it while living it up on the first half billion.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
FTA:
Solyndra produces cylindrical panels that convert sunlight into electricity using copper-indium-gallium-diselenide thin- film technology. Standard solar panels are flat.
“Manufacturing and assembly costs associated with a Solyndra module aren’t particularly scalable,” Krop said.
The design and tech. may have been sound, but for scalable purposes to compete with modern flat panels coming out of China for $.01's on the $1, I find most ANY US solar panel venture to have problems competing. Why else do you think the US companies are looking at printable solutions and the like. The economics have already been done on modern flat panel design and China has it on the cheap hands down. Companies in the US know where the cheap implementations are. This company just didn't put scale earlier enough in the design process.
With solar these days, it's scale or go home. There is no in between!
A sweetheart loan fast-tracked by the current Energy Secretary. Potential campaign finance laws broken. A crony-capitalism deal of magnanimous proportions. Fraud and malfeasance? A company that no private investor wanted?
Yep, that's the Obama administration in a nutshell. Glad you voted for him now?
These guys and Evergreen Solar both had viable advanced products, good ideas, and solid business practices and a eagerness to hire local/american workers to do a job that desperately needs doing. The folded because of 'free trade' competition with China who is more than willing to dump silicon tetrachloride in people's backyards (rather than recycling it as is required here) and pay people nigh-on slave wages in the process. You can't compete with that. If you want high quality jobs here in the states... if you want progressive, good-intentioned, future-forging entrepreneurship... then exit free trade and renegotiate in fair trade deals... or reinstate rational tariffs.
if they were a "solar" company - maybe the commute to the sun hurt their profits
( ... muffled ... whispers ... )
I have just been informed that they were guilty of having very good lobbyists and no one thought this solar power thing would really work anyway. Maybe some of those 1,100 ex-employees will consider starting a business selling a product or service that people want/need and for which they are willing/able to pay.
If they are lucky they will burn through 0.5 billion dollars before going bankrupt
(/tongue in cheek)
It is also worth pointing out that a great marketing plan for a terrible product is also a great way to quickly kill the product (Ford Edsel). You can't lose a little money on every transaction and stay in business (dot.com bust). AND a society based on repressing a large part of their population cannot last (I'm looking at you China).
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
Isn't this just an example of why R&D needs to return to the corporations product lifecycle? There are not a lot of American centers of R&D for this stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaics_companies
I don't see to many American companies on that list.
We have outsourced ourselves into a corner.
Made out like a bandit.
There's a rich man or two, after this "Solyndra" scam was used by insiders to funnel 500Mil. Mark my words.
You live in a Kleptocracy. The "foreign competitiveness" front sound very plausible. That's why the whole "green technology boondoggle/buble exists. Not that it might not be needed - but any affair involving billionaires will be used for private extraction. We live in the "post-economic" era, where the pretense of an economy is used to commit outrageous crimes.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The trouble is that corp wellfare only works in this country alone. Unless you're suggesting that we also subsidies energy in other countries too.
The best argument I've ever heard against subsidies for Green technology was from a VC in Silicon Valley and the interview was in Scientific American a few months ago - and I can't find the damn article.
In a nutshell, a green energy source must be economically feasible without subsidies because the places where they have the greatest chance of being adopted are in developing countries - countries that cannot afford to subsidize energy. The same goes for in developed countries - for political reasons.
The argument that with enough subsides eventually it will become economically feasible doesn't cut it and it's not true. The subsidies have a habit of never going away - see Oil Industry.
Make a "green" energy source economically feasibly without subsidies and it will take the World by storm - there will be no need for laws to force people to use it or tax incentives or any other political trickery.
A superior technology will win and has always won.
First:A $535 Million loan guarantee is not the same as a subsidy....so.....maybe these articles need to be vetted a little better. Second: “Solyndra could not achieve full-scale operations rapidly enough to compete in the near term with the resources of larger foreign manufacturers,” - DUH!! And this will continue happening as long as the US is not China.... ....so instead....we should CREATE NEW TECHNOLOGY and license it for manufacture to other countries....welcome to International Business 101
Individuals must choose, decide their "essential" nature rather than having it given from some transcendent source.
Oh how I wish I had mod points. Creating demand is way more effective than handing out cash. If only the GOP would recognize that and get off their tax cut crack pipe.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Just so everyone is clear, the article says that the Feds backstopped $535MM of the company's borrowings, which isn't the same as giving $535MM in subsidies. In BK, the company's assets will be liquidated to pay off creditors, with the Feds only covering the shortfall (because it's just a guarantee)... and it sounds like the company has a salable facility and marginal patent/IP rights. I'm not saying there won't be a sizable loss, but I don't think "US LOSES $535MM ON GREEN ENERGY SUBSIDIES" is fair to say either.
The market will, in the VAST majority of cases, choose options that do both: 'support what is good for society' AND 'what is profitable'. In the end, the market reacts to forces and in these days of increased government interference...
In case you haven't been paying attention, there's a budget crisis going on and I for one am tired of some bunch of morons in DC telling me what's a good or bad idea.
The company has borrowed $527 million of the $535 million Energy Department loan guarantee, Damien LaVera, the agency’s press secretary, said today in an e-mail.
Solyndra plans to include the Energy Department loan guarantee in its bankruptcy filing.
How much is the difference? Can you calculate?
That plenty of Green Businesses here in the Bay Area are doing very well, primarily Petersen Dean, though others include SunWize, RPS Solar and REC Solar to name a few. Of course they are all private sector businesses that our current government wouldn't concern themselves with because they only want to give handouts to corporate america and green start-ups that have no legitimate plan for growth or success.
Ave Molech Setting
from TFA
Well, misguided yes, but not only because government has a lower success rate with business investment than does private venture capital, or because of the corruption intrinsic in the corporate welfare scam of the taxpayer bearing the risk of investment and the private business owner receiving the profits.
Beyond those reasons, the "Green Jobs" initiative was farcical propaganda because, to the degree the "green" energy replaced conventional sources, green jobs would supplant jobs in conventional energy sector; The people working in the coal-fired plant are not going to keep working there after its shut down and replaced by a solar plant. New Jobs Gained in Solar Plant - Old Jobs Lost in Coal Plan = Zero Net Employment Gain.
His green jobs promise is one instance of a pervasive class of conceptual errors committed by this President: His unceasing failure to comprehend tradeoffs. "Green Jobs" trade one type of employment for another, they do not increase net employment. High-efficiency vehicle mandates trade increased embodied energy costs for decreased fuel consumption, but do not decrease the total energy consumed over the lifetime of the vehicle. Corn ethanol mandates and subsidies trade consumption of fossil fuel by passenger vehicles for consumption of fossil fuel in the production of corn ethanol. Cash-for-clunkers trades car sales during the program for future car sales; people just move their purchase forward to take advantage of the program during the eligibility period.
Obama has made fundamental conceptual errors in devising public policy then invented preposterous explanations for the failed outcomes of those policies. As the opinion poles suggest, blaming ATMs and corporate jet owners for the failure of the green jobs fairy to rescue the economy will probably not win him elections.
As I have pointed out previously, genuine green energy investments by those with a record of success at that kind of thing is good.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
before leaving the company, the founder/ceo and his assorted pets had 50% increase in base pay each year for several consecutive years (geez I want a job like that.) talk about raiding the coffer.
This place sucked rocks long before Junis was arrested by the Taliban.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Who are these fucken idiots approving grant money to uncompetitive ventures that are destined for failure.
Oh yeah, I forgot, these are the same idiots who got parachuted into their positions because of who they know rather than what they know.
So we now have a system run by a bunch of unqualified, malfeasance idiots, whose only lot in life is to pay forward friends of those who got them their Beltway jobs.
Glassdoor.com rating for solyndra was only a 2.6, which is pretty bad considering the exciting tech they work with. Most of the posts (most recent was in May) are by Engineers who basically say "the tech is cool, but management is terrible and top heavy."
So, really not that surprising how it went down...
Ah, yes. We can make 'green technology' profitable by simply... taking more money from taxpayers and giving it to them.
That'll work.
The only "green" in these jobs are the dollars being flushed down the toilet.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
First, once you establish an economic flow from gov to corps, tax-payers, ... it is impossible to get rid of it. The US, last I heard, still had a marino sheep wool subsidy set up in WWI because they needed it for some war-related item.
Second, you have given the gov more power. As money buys power, you must expect that some rich entity will figure out how to use that power for their own benefit.
90% of the news is some variation of 'money buys power'. Much of the rest is related to 'you can't take my subsidy'.
so yes, we can make green technology profitable by simply (and I'm going to edit your post a little) devoting more resources to them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Are you questioning the value of mutual coercion in society?
Do you only believe in private property if other people are FORCED to respect it too? Or would you dutifully subsist on only those things which you "owned" if you lived in a society which observed no such conventions and everyone else considered it their right to whatever "possessions" you couldn't successfully defend from them?
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
They still have the technology or IP rights. The thing is they make solar panels with cylinders not a flat plane so the angle that light hits it is optimal over the day. The main reason they went under is all manufacturing was done here in USA. They could not compete with Chinese (subsidized) solar manufacturing. Plus overall demand is down globally due to cheap Chinese products. So they will just license off the tech or get it made in China. Americans suffer because there is no job for manufacturing because of free trade policies and a lack of government protection. The executives and investors won't lose don't worry about them. The real loser is the working class here in America. What is the reason for green tech anyway? Corporations are people now do you think they give a rats ass about children. Corporations are built for profit and profit only. The new American dream is invent something make it in China and sell globally. Keep Americans poor so they will join military and we can have them fight and die for corporate interest over seas.
"The market will, in the VAST majority of cases, choose options that do both: 'support what is good for society' AND 'what is profitable'."
Ah, faith-based economics... People ARE the market, the people elect the government, government 'interference' as you blithely call it IS the market reacting.
Pay attention yourself.
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
Well shit, the government wasted all that money. All $500 million. Down the toilet.
I say we add it to the $6.851 Billion that's waste... err, well used by more important entities. (not to mention it might not have even been $500 million if they were loan guarantees)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
at stealing taxpayers money to line the pockets of politically connected crooks.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
To me, that says that companies building solar products today are far better off aiming at small, niche use cases than they are a general market. That said, though, there's still far more of a market in solar technology today than there was when I was a kid in the '70s. Much more choice, cheaper prices, better availability, you name it.
And no, I don't think it's all due to government subsidies. Some of it is aimed at the kind of use case that I'm thinking of. Think about warning signs near construction sites, for example. Remember those huge diesel generators that used to be mounted on the trailer as the sign? I don't see those very often these days.
If Kurzweil is right about the exponential improvement in technology, I think solar companies should be spending at least some R&D today to build more general use products starting in the next 8-10 years. They should be aiming at much more general use products in 12-16 years. Otherwise they risk getting run over by more nimble competitors.
A bad investment is one that is not viable on its own, such as existing green tech that is not profitable.
A good investment is one that helps develop tech that is financially viable on its own. In other words, research. We should support those looking for new inventions that would support themselves once developed. Once developed, let the open market reap the benefits.
This event once again proves the truth of my pre-conceived ideology.
*sigh*
Regardless of why, this particular example of government action didn't work. Let's try something else.
"This was an unexpected outcome and is most unfortunate." Solyndra chief executive Brian Harrison said in a statement. "Regulatory and policy uncertainties" made it impossible to raise capital to quickly rescue the operation, he said. The same environmental and labor groups that champion the cause of green energy have created so much regulation that even a half-billion-dollar-subsidized, presidential-pet, green-energy company can't make it. * The title credit goes to Glenn Reynolds, but I thought it was appropriate.
People need to realize that moving forward technologically means there are going to be a lot of expensive failures to go with the successes.
It happens in research labs and it will happen on the market too.
What's kind of surprising is the outright hostility to the idea of alternative fuels. You guys have 401(k)s heavily invested in oil or something? Good chunk of this thread just doesn't seem to WANT this to work.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
A few engineer friends from the now defunct optics division of a major US laser manufacturer were hired by another California solar start up (OptiSolar) two years ago. The company was promised federal funding and started a second large manufacturing site in Sacramento, which they began staffing with about 1,100 employees. The money from the feds fell through and the whole thing was sold to a Canadian firm. They kept a dozen or so key engineers to move one assembly line to Canada, where they stayed on to produced a first article to meet a production contract obligation. Once everything was working, the Canadian engineers took over and the Americans moved back home to look for jobs in the elusive world of high tech manufacturing.
The point being, this is not news, or at least not new news. The Federal government appears to be as interested in investing in alternative fuel development as the petroleum industry is... Not at all. Nothing changes until change is unavoidable. Unfortunately, we have too much infrastructure to hold to that philosophy.
This sounds like a Mel Brooks comedy...
1: Get hundreds of millions in government loans.
1a: Hire sexy secretary.
2: Declare bankruptcy.
3: PROFIT!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If this is part of the stimulus, I wonder if the negative 1100 jobs counts toward the total jobs created by all our money. It would be kind of funny and kind of sad if we spent a trillion dollars to create jobs and the total job creation from that spending ended up being negative.
http://www.borsaitaliana.it/borsa/notizie/mf-dow-jones/internazionali-dettaglio.html?newsId=893539&lang=en
In short, solar manufacturers around the world are taking a hit due to an oversupply of panels. America actually exports more solar technology than it imports, to a tune of $2 billion a year (study funded by solar industry so take it with a grain of salt).
A lot of the discussion around here seems to focus on individuals purchasing solar panels. That thinking is too small. The real solar projects in America are happening on larger scales with companies like Southern California Edison, PG&E and other utilities. They are bringing hundreds of megawatts online every year and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
In another article I read recently, solar companies struggling to survive are integrating vertically and offering consulting and design services on larger projects. The margins are too slim on the manufacturing side.
From the article,
"While solar-panel manufacturing is likely to continue migrating to China and other Asian countries, U.S. companies do supply many of the Chinese manufacturing giants. U.S.-based MEMC Electronic Materials Inc. (WFR) and Hemlock Semiconductor supply the raw silicon needed to make solar wafers, while Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT) makes solar-product manufacturing equipment. "
We have a couple of years until these Chinese manage to reverse engineer the equipment that Applied Materials is selling them.
Once again it comes down to the labor advantage that the Chinese have. American companies are making the equipment that the Chinese are using to crank out the product. They are able to produce the product for less because they have lower overhead and can pay their people less.
In the end, are we really losing here? We develop the technology. The Chinese make it for us for less than we would have to spend to make it ourselves. We buy it from them and then use it in projects designed by Americans and built by American companies. I'm pretty sure that these projects were not built by Chinese contractors.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/siting/solar/index.html
On the other hand, we are getting screwed on the R&D front.
http://blog.appliedmaterials.com/worlds-most-advanced-solar-rd-center
Just google "solyndra campaign donor"
http://theenergycollective.com/breakthroughinstitut/51021/china-rd-investment-grow-faster-us
It might be time to start removing any economic subsidies or benefits we provide to companies who decide to offshore their R&D.
And you are complicit in THAT thievery
No you ass, buying grid electricity does not make you "complicit" in the (environmental, financial, et cetera) crimes committed by electrical utilities. Here on Planet America*, buying grid electricity is a practical necessity for the vast majority of people. Those people still have a right to ask that the electricity they buy be generated from more environmentally responsible sources. There is absolutely no hypocrisy in this.
*also Planet Europe and Planet Eastern Asia
by sitting in front of your computer,
Oh no, he's SITTING. What a JERK.
probably someplace where it is air conditioned
Holy shit, you are one self-righteous prick.
PS in some places (eg San Diego, Arizona), if you are over the age of ~70, an air conditioner is a SURVIVAL NECESSITY in summertime. Also, you are one self-righteous prick.
posting your asinine banalities on Slashdot.
Holy shit self-awareness much?
Or do you have one of those new-fangled computers that run without electricity?
Or else he has solar panels, or a similar off-grid solution, or he buys electricity from an environmentally responsible supplier (you dumb sack of shit).
The problem with these discussions is that we willfully ignore the role of subsidies and loan guarantees from the government in creating the world around us. I am thinking of railroads, highways, airports and energy -- just to hit the high points. Government has provided the capital when the project was too large or seen as too risky for private capital to fund. Or it was realized, like the interstate highway system, that certain facilities were necessary for the defense of the country in addition to the commercial benefits we enjoy.The challenge is to know when to stop -- for some things the tax breaks and subsidies have become a part of the landscape, way past the point when they should have stopped. And unfortunately politicians are always choosing winners and losers with technologies and companies. One would hope that they and their friends are not busily lining their own pockets in the process -- but one of the lamentable defects of society and its governance is that it consists of people. Personally, on the green tech stuff, I wish the direction was for more affordable technology not just even more expensive vendors. In the end there will always be winners and losers -- hopefully the society as a whole ends up in the former camp.
Your post solidifies my resolve that, as LehiNephi eloquently explained, production of goods should never be subsidized: Solyndra failed in spite of the extraordinarily hard work put in by its employees.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Can we please leave "the western world" out of this ? Every eastern world committed slavery and child-rape on a massive scale. Islam committed massive genocides is in addition to their long-lived (and even currently practiced) "holy act" of child rape (their prophet fucked a 6-9 year old girl against her will, as anyone can verify in their "holy" texts, and of course it's an accepted sharia rule that you are free to rape (and sell) babies) (oh and one difference between "peaceful" sufi islam and sunni/shia is that sufi's practice child-rape on both boys and girls. Apparently it's the only way to "experience the true beauty of allah"). Muslims ... well let's just say that before their actions, northern africa was entirely 100% black (except for parts of Egypt). As anyone can tell, it's now 0%. Reading the history books you find out immediately what caused this : massive slave trade (as in at the very least 100x more people than America ever touched), and worse : all the black slaves transported into the muslim world, were exterminated. Reading the. history books you will find that a lot of muslim states had slave hunts, for fun, genocides, executions and worse for fun. Worse you say ? It's not hard to find books describing the practice of killing a female slave *while* you're raping her. Apparently that's fun, and morally right (after all, the quran explicitly states that you can rape slaves, which their prophet did, and explicitly says you can kill them for any reason, why not combine both practices, right ?). Thousands of people died that way. The previous "western" world, is divided in three parts : indians, which liked to commit genocide on their neighbors, executing any survivors by tying them to the ground, then skinning them alive, then leaving them for animals to eat. I am sure they had other, equally inventive practices applied to anyone without the power to militarily resist them. And on the souther pre-western front we have mayans and incas, who regularly went out and "conquered" prisoners, tortured them for months, and then finally cut out their hearts on sacrificial altars. The western world, even during it's very worst and as fucked up as it is, is pretty fucking moral compared to pretty much any successfull alternative. But of course, you could say that's not at all that hard, after all, the nazi holocaust was one hell of a lot better than what most non-western states do on a regular day.
Why are you starting this discussion ? The one and only relevant question is :
If alternative energy is indeed cheaper to produce, why doesn't this firm have more money than the US government by now ?
Because the default answer is simply that the detractors are right and alternative energy is worse than coal *and* nuclear, both in terms of EREI (exp. return on energy investment) and EROI.
If we think like the thread starter, that a $500 million failure simply means we need to try something bigger, then we'll simply waste all our resources on a wild goose chase of whatever is popular of the day. Let's please not go there. It's also pretty much proof of the exact statement that he seemingly wanted to avoid : pro-"renewable energy" people have at least one religious nutcase among them.
There are several solar technologies and you can lose by betting on the wrong one, which it appears was a factor here. A lot of companies with advanced technology have low profit margins (or no profits). The tech may be good, but it doesn't guarantee you a profit when others can sell an equivalent at a better price/performance ratio.
Solar companies have also been affected by the withdrawal of subsidies for installation of solar, especially in Europe. If your business model is based on assuming a level of subsidy on the consumption side, you are in trouble if that changes.
Everyone who made $500M in income last year paid zero-to-15% in taxes, while you probably paid 30%. They created no net jobs because there is no tax incentive to invest in anything even remotely risky.
But it's those darn Democrats and their green socialism that's causin' all these problems up in here.
But i got this guy, Not Sure.
Because it is another indicator that the cost of PV modules is falling rapidly. This is what we all want, right?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-04/first-solar-quarterly-profit-drops-as-module-prices-decline.html
BTW the world's largest PV manufacturer First Solar is American and plans to increase PV production as prices per panel drop.
NONE of the costs of which are factored into the price of coal? That's A-OK?...One way is to subsidize green tech.
In theory, internalizing the costs is a good idea. In practice, it is very hard to do correctly and government is no better at it than the multinationals. Just because a venture has "solar" in the prospectus does not mean that the idea is feasible, will ever be economical, or even is particularly "green". Subsidizing one alternative technology does not just run the risk of wasting taxpayer money (which is the bread and butter of Congress anyway), but of foreclosing better alternatives, such as squiggly light bulbs with mercury versus domestic LEDs or improvements on incandescents or ... something we haven't thought of yet. Similarly, taxing coal might drive people to use more solar, or it might drive them to use something even worse which doesn't happen to be taxed. IPP laws in the US seem to have driven the market for natural gas turbines rather than the renewable energies the law was intended to promote.
So, any effort at internalizing external costs has to be approached very carefully, and for the most part, they are not. Instead we make bad decisions for political gain and thereby encourage more bad decisions for economic gain.
I consider Evergreen to be a great loss. As my wife just reminded me, they came up with innovative ways to cut silicon wafers with less energy and waste. They also developed a strategy for producing solar panels using renewables in their own process. They seemed to be energetic, innovative, and relatively responsible. But your point is taken: instead of subsidizing failing businesses, we need to change the politico-economic climate which is causing them to fail, most of which is self-inflicted.
How much did we spend on Iraq? The oil subsidies are considerably higher than what we put into green technology. You have to factor in the huge military expenditures we make to keep the oil flowing. The green subsidies are too low and the oil too high.(include a lot of dead and injured American soldiers in the formula, also).
Government regulation - and I mean permissions and taxes, NOT safety regulations - are of course the reason that it's expensive in the first place. It's all fine and dandy to call nuclear power expensive when the government won't even look at your proposal unless you give them 50 million dollars. At this point we're talking about the "maybe we'll actually request permission in 10 years"-permission. No plans, no sites, no nothing, just "we'd like to supply X gigawatt to this-or-that electrical grid, is that okay ?" (and that's just the money the fed asks, you also need state permission).
Having the government evaluate a site (which you have to do dozens of times due to nuclear's -moronic- unpopularity) ? 2.5 million ...
So frankly, that the government pays for decommissioning is perhaps not that unreasonable.
This yet another decacle in Obama's hands speeks volumes about Obama's subtrafuge toward the USA.
A nice showing would be all members of Congress to boycot Obama ... and let the camera roam the empty iles of Congress.
With that ... nough said.
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Let's take that $5 billion in corporate welfare away from big oil and give it to hundreds of small energy companies.
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This product is a really interesting take on the problem of presenting a semiconductor junction electricity generating device to the sun.
I urge you to go to the solyndra.com website and look at the product description.
The design places the solar electric generator in something that looks like a 4 foot long fluorescent lamp tube.
Look at the end cap of the tube, It is a spline that locks the tube against rotation. It looks like the generating unit is a 4 foot tube that snaps into a frame, and the ends of the tube are the electrical output terminals.
I built solar energy collector devices in 1973 and there are a lot of things about the Solyndra design that I like.
The first thing I did in my projects was put the active collector in a tube, and experiment with reflector designs. One reflector was a trough made of Ultracal sculpture plaster with an aluminium foil lining. I modelled parabolas and circles for their focal effectiveness. A second reflector was a Fresnel reflector, the prototype was machined out of aluminium. The ideal would be a sheet of 1 1/2" thick Celotex roof insulation with a reflective aluminium Fresnel reflector embossed in the top layer or attached with a hot wax or melted plastic membrane. That means you are looking at insulated 100 year roof lifetimes where individual panels can be replaced without having to do the entire roof.
The design point I would make is: the common flat plastic and glass solar electric generator panels are clumsy, they are not easy to replace, they can not be opened and repaired, and they are going to be a bear to deal with when they get old, start failing and have to be disturbed to re-roof the house underneath.
The beauty of the tube type solar electric generator is you can replace them individually, They can be disassembled, rebuilt, reloaded with the latest generation of thin film generator, and you can operate your device in an inert gas environment.
An earlier post that the man who started this design, Dr. Chris Gronet, "has transitioned to the role of advisor and consultant." indicates that the current bankruptcy is for wresting ownership of the design into the hands of new investment money.
Another thing that is visible from the product information pages at Solyndra is the company has been trying to both build a semiconductor device, and deliver a proprietary mounting, shipping and installation system around the device and then sell into the very limited market of flat roof industrial buildings.
Notice that the literature says "lightweight and self-ballasting." and it also says rated for hail and 130 mile per hour wind. These phrases indicate a little too much optimism about the realities of mounting stuff on a roof for 25 years.
Besides wresting control, perhaps this bankruptcy is in anticipation of a product replacement request following the hurricane of last week.
Here is a thought: The tube type solar electricity generator needs to become a generic product in it's own right. A long lasting re-roofing solution needs to become a product in it's own right, You buy a thick 100 year rated insulating surface for your existing roof with the thickness and configuration depending on your climate and roof slope. Finally, you get the focusing surface of the new insulating roof moulded or tuned based on your longitude and roof orientation. Then the solar installer screws the tube mounting frames to the roof according to moulded dimples in the custom reflector surface. The generator tubes snap into place and the installation is ready to deliver 600 volts DC.
So what is the point of having a generic tubular solar electricity generator. Note the Solendra product has a liquid filling called an "optical coupling agent". Hey, suppose this liquid (I guess it is kerosene!) is replaced with an optical energy storage fluid? Something that will make the tube generate electricity after the sun goes down. Now you can see some more elegant advantages to a tubular solar energy generating device?
Yes... a proper silicon fab plant costs billions to build. Ask Intel, Foundery, TSMC or the others involved. Therefore any solar company will be limited by the silicon they can acquire without the ability to experiment, tool and retool thee plants. Given the outrageous cost of this type of business, it either needs to be government run or whoever is running it will have one chance at most to get it right.
That being said... your point is utter rubbish in this context since anyone with a clue should have realized this long before ever getting this business running. When the crooks running this company started taking the money, they should have made it perfectly clear to the idiot politicians they begged for money that this company would likely leak like a wooden ship hit by a cruise missile. Additionally, it would be likely that this company would be so heavily in debt by the time it folded that the company's value was not the eventual possibility to turn a profit, but instead was to provide a tremendous amount of research in solar energy to the world after it has gone defunct, allowing future companies to startup using a niche of their research and turn a profit based on it.
Based on that, I'm convinced that some people got VERY VERY fat on this. I'd even guess that there are some politicians involved in the funding process who did quite well on this. This stinks of either criminal stupidity or outright corruption. Giving more money to these people would have been a curse.
CO2 will kill the biosphere eh? It's like someone saw the DHMO prank and thought, "Hey, let's just do this for real."
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-sunergy-extends-warranty-on-solar-modules-to-ten-years-2011-09-02
NANJING, China, Sept. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- China Sunergy Co., Ltd. /quotes/zigman/106270/quotes/nls/csun CSUN -0.82% ("China Sunergy" or "The Company"), a specialized solar cell and module manufacturer, today announced an enhanced module product warranty policy.
Under this new policy, China Sunergy will extend its limited product warranty covering defects in materials and workmanship from five to ten years, for all standard Photovoltaic Solar Module products shipped after August 10, 2011.
ABC News report in May: Did Obama Administration Cut Corners For a Green Energy Company?
It is clear from the debate that the "value" of this investment means different things to different people. It is clear that $500M US is a lot of money. Money or an "investment" that seems to be at this point at a significant loss to the tax payer. Some could point out this $500M could have been put to better use, i.e. funding education, infrastructure or fighting poverty for example (that is for those on the left side of the argument). Or this money could have been left in the hands of the tax payer, lower the national debt, or re-building public infrastructure (that is for the right side of the argument). Both sides need to understand that America was and still is an experiment. Things rise and fall, less government, more government is not really what this debate should be about. The better questions are why it failed and in what context. Blaming the economy is fruitless and tiresome. Good product sells no matter where you are. Some have said that the technology is not ready for commercialization. Perhaps so. Other are saying that the loss is nothing in compared to the ongoing subsidies we provide other industries - so in essence keep you pants on as its part of what we have to do to make the world a healthy place. Perhaps so as well. What I do know is that the Chinese are now the world leaders in solar technologies. They have invested many more billions than this $500M loss through state/private owned corporations. America has had great state funded based technological successes in the past. So has the private sector. What needs to be investigate - publicized - and prioritized is the mistakes and successes of this enterprise, clear the balance sheet, and try it again but in a different way. America used to be a country where we learned from our mistakes and perhaps the next solution will be a better one. We all can agree clean energy is too important to ignore. We need to put several models into play, some state, some private, some subsidy based, some tax credit based and see which solution fits best given the people and organizations involved . One size does not fit all and allowing people and organizations to run at their own speed is always what nature has intended. Put you dogma and ideologies aside, results are what matter here - know this - the Chinese have.
The whole population can't scrap the entire housing infrastructure and rebuild their entire lives out of totally new-design housing. Tighter insulation means less air circulation. That means an unhealthy habitat.
It means tighter control over the airflow of that habitat. There is nothing preventing someone from opening a window selectively. That's most of how we cool during the summer: close the house up during the day to keep it from heating up and open it up at night to cool it down. Wallah! Airflow and energy savings.
You're burning wood and calling it a green energy source? Really????
Yup. You know it even looks green? (While on the tree anyway.) We get wood from our own wood lot which replenishes itself every year pulling the CO2 we emit right back out of the air. We burn dead-fall and cullings from managing the wood lot. Our stove is most efficient with small bits of wood, so we burn mostly sticks and twigs. Given that, we very seldom have to use the chainsaw and expend fossil fuel. We have probably between 1/3 and 1/2 of our season's wood put up right now and have not used the chainsaw once. The only time we even fired it up this year is when we went to help with Joplin's disaster relief.
You know what would happen if we did not burn it? It would sit on the ground and rot or build up until there was a wildfire and the same gases would get released anyway. We use the heat of the wood stove to cook in the cold months and reuse the ash first to leech for potash for soap making (and leavening) and then as soil amendment in the garden. We're in the middle of building a wood-fired mass oven in the backyard to do a lot of baking efficiently, with renewable energy, and outside the house in the warm months so the heat does not contribute to cooling costs. So, yes, wood is a "a green energy source". Perhaps not for everyone or the way everyone does it, but it just goes to show that people have options for doing things effectively if they don't get caught up in irrational dogma about what's "green" or "not green". Green energy is in the process and the life-cycle, not the choice of technology.
What is important is how much per hour its costs a consumer to function. Green is money spent. Why do I want my functioning costs going up by a factor of 3-4?
first time accepted submitter to gf. i was hoping to boldly go where no man had gone before.
... is that in our present age - it is not economically viable. These recent bankrupts just further reinforce my view.
Solar energy doesn't stand a chance against competitors like oil and coal. The only major reason it's still alive - is because of the global warming. We are forced to look for alternative sources of energy. It's not as if we had found this charming new technology, that sweeps out the old ones, because it's cheaper, more efficient or whatever. No. It's because if we don't sweep them old ones out - they will sweep us from the surface of this planet.
The cost of being forced to use this energy is the one which drags it down.
Mind you - I'm not against using solar panels. Or better put this way - I'm against global warming. I don't care what energy source one uses, as long as they' don't have any serious negative side-effects.
My ideal would be that, some time in the future, we create artificial photosynthesis on a global scale. This would solve a lot of problems - green-house effect (and global warming by extension), CO2 levels, de-forestation of the planet, and the energy problem. But I don't think we'll get there any time soon. For the time being we're stuck with electrical cars and solar panels.
So who gets their cool (hot?) cylindrical tech? It would be a shame if nothing came of it as it seems much more efficient than flat panels without the need for tracking.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
It's not the that the subsidy is too low, it's that the subsidy for carbon based energy production is way too high.
Where in the Constitution is the Clause that "Congress shall tax the citizens to provide funding for solar energy companies in order to make them potentially profitable."?