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The World's Largest Renewable Energy Developer Could Go Broke (huffingtonpost.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the it's-only-a-matter-of-time dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Huffington Post: There is a "substantial risk" that SunEdison may file for bankruptcy, the world's largest renewable energy developer said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday. The company's fall isn't a referendum on the solar industry as a whole, as much as it is on SunEdison's aggressive growth strategy fueled by excessive debt and financial engineering, analysts say. SunEdison "just thought they were smarter than everyone else," said David Levine, the founder and CEO of Geostellar, a solar energy marketplace that has done deals with the company.
SunEdison loaded up a total of $11 billion in debt to develop or acquire renewable energy projects. The company's shares have fallen steeply since they hit a high of $30 in July. They were at just $1.26 before the filing. The stock immediately dropped another 40 percent when the market opened after the filing, and the company was trading at just $0.59 by Tuesday lunchtime.

15 of 292 comments (clear)

  1. Regardless of the reasons... by fredgiblet · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...People are gonna claim it's proof that renewables don't work.

    1. Re:Regardless of the reasons... by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 5, Funny

      Curiously, this story was not posted by mdsolar.

    2. Re:Regardless of the reasons... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, Solyndra and this - the evidence that the market works and bad business plans properly fail.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    3. Re:Regardless of the reasons... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...People are gonna claim it's proof that renewables don't work.

      As an electrical engineer that works for a company that installs solar systems, they don't work. Well, when you add the government subsidies, that we all pay for in taxes, they're only bad instead of horrible.

    4. Re:Regardless of the reasons... by EEPROMS · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This has nothing to do with solar panels, in this case the directors (like many retarded MBA's coming out of US universities) went with the 5 year insane growth model that just doesn't work with solar power production. If I was going to blame anyone it would be US universities training students to be bad business managers.

    5. Re: Regardless of the reasons... by funwithBSD · · Score: 5, Informative

      You kidding?

      Tax breaks paid for 60% of my solar system. The only way it made economic sense.

      --
      Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
    6. Re: Regardless of the reasons... by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 4, Funny

      Do you generate enough electricity to run your power washer?

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    7. Re: Regardless of the reasons... by mspohr · · Score: 5, Informative

      Fossil fuels receive $5.3 Trillion in subsidies annually.
      Subsidies for fossil fuels amount to $1,000 a year for every citizen living in the G20 group of the world’s leading economies, despite the group’s pledge in 2009 to phase out support for coal, oil and gas.
      https://www.imf.org/external/p...

      --
      I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
    8. Re: Regardless of the reasons... by KGIII · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I have solar and wind. I do not have them as a cost saver. I have them because I like electricity. My home is in NW, Maine. I am not shitting you when I say that my mains connection is a backup. Come winter, it's not usual to go as long as a week without power. There's nothing important past me and, even though I'm not far from the fat pipes of juice that come in from Canada, I'm pretty much out of luck until every other person gets their power back.

      I was not in that specific area during the Ice Storm of 98 (January, I believe) but I've been there for two since. The longest was almost two weeks without power. During the 98 episode, they didn't have power for almost a month.

      In fact, about six miles beyond my house is a guy who has still has no power. Of course, he's never had power. The lines go by his house and he still doesn't want power. He does have dial-up internet, I do believe. He was not interested in DSL. Curious sort of guy. Bad hygiene, I guess he was doing post-doc work when his brain kind of snapped, and he's been living off the grid in a cabin that his family owns since the early 1970s. Smart as all hell. He has some solar and a generator. Mostly survives off the land. Cuts a bit of my wood and hunts my deer and fishes my fishies. I'm quite okay with it. He's been over more than once - I've owned the new house since 2008. I was in for Christmas.

      At any rate, I make more than enough electricity to push some into the grid. They only give credits for the power - not money. I can sell, trade, or gift the credits. I can donate them to a charitable organization or to a State organization (of some types) and get a reduction in tax burden. As it was just updated with extra panels and a second turbine, I'm going to wait a full year and then I'll donate the credits to the local elementary school. I like 'em. The kids call me Mr. David. As some of them are getting to be adults now, I find it rather amusing to hear the young adults call me Mr. David.

      They use a piece of land that I own, it's an old and nonworking sandpit for their keg parties and for shooting. They police their brass. They even came and borrowed my truck, trailer, and tractor once year - they went out and cleaned up all the junk that people had left there over the years. They cleaned up old fridges, cars, burnt out cars, and (oddly) a giant (ocean going) lobster boat that was sans-trailer. I have no idea how the boat got there, it was there when I bought the place and nobody has fessed up yet.

      At any rate, that's enough of a novella. ;-) I didn't buy solar to make money back. I don't care that it isn't the cheapest. That I have turbines, and really good ones, you can guess that money was not the objective. I did it because it was the right choice for me to make. I like having electricity and the wind, so far as we know, has never quite stopped where the turbines are. It's all automated, I don't need to worry about a thing. You could say I did it to be green. Sort of? Not really... I just like having electricity. It's not even remotely uncommon to lose power there.

      (I am not there. I will be there within the next month, probably.)

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    9. Re: Regardless of the reasons... by religionofpeas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Price of solar panels has dropped by more than 60% in the last decade, and the end is not in sight. Pretty soon the system you paid with tax breaks will cost less new without tax breaks. On the other hand, price of oil, coal and gas will go up in the future.

    10. Re:Regardless of the reasons... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Since the take-over I've had two stories posted as AC. Both times I submitted under my username. The first time my name was changed to AC and the second time the editor just deleted the author attribution altogether.

      I'm wondering if the editors sometimes remove names to prevent ad-hom attacks on the story (I should consider that next time) or if it's just the usual editing cock-up that Slashdot seems to somehow encourage.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    11. Re: Regardless of the reasons... by evilviper · · Score: 4, Informative

      They closes thing they get to a subsidy is what the government buys from them for their own use, for the reserve, and what they give out to poor people to heat.

      Last I heard (2013), oil companies were getting on the order of $5.1 billion in subsidies for exploration. https://newrepublic.com/articl...

      Categorization of oil under the tax code as a form of domestic manufacturing eligible for a 6% deduction of net income, claiming foreign royalty payments as a credit against American taxes, and deducting numerous costs associated with the drilling process is absolutely an insane handout that other energy suppliers are excluded from. http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/29/...

      By comparison, research and development for solar energy was given only $302 million; and wind energy just $123 million. http://www.reuters.com/article...

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    12. Re:Regardless of the reasons... by CaptainLard · · Score: 4, Informative

      Thats a very wide definition of "renewable energy company" (Navistar: truck manufacturer, Babcock & Brown: financial consultants, Thompson River Power: trying to liquidate their new coal plant) and "failure" (Vestas: 685M Euro income in 2015, Amonix: Just broke a record for PV energy output).

      I didn't look through all of them but I'm guessing you just copy pasted a list of DOE energy loans from some blog. Feel free to prove me wrong by doing your own research and posting an up to date summary of each of your listed company's current outlooks.

  2. Well there's you're problem... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Your source is Huffingtonpost.com

    So it can't be true.

    (Just doing what the people that hate foxnews do ALL THE TIME.)

    Effin idiots.

    This comment we be hidden in 3, 2, 1...

  3. Re:Anything to due with expiring subsidies? by CaptainLard · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nope!

    Federal subsidies were just renewed in full for 3 years so this has nothing to do with any expiration, just an overly ambitious business model. In fact, even if you removed all subsidies from residential solar installations (currently the most expensive per watt) you'd still break even before the panel warranty on production runs out in a lot of places. That price has fallen almost 30% over the past 3 years thanks partly to the last subsidy. When this renewal is done most of the country should have the option for a residential install with a break even point in under 10 years...with zero subsidy! Non-sarcastic thanks, government!