Another DOE-Backed Solar Company Declares Bankruptcy

Updates

September 17, 2013: add Ecotality to the list.  And no one will be held accountable. The MBAs/CEO's will simply move on to the next gravy train.

September 15, 2013: another DOE failure; DOE defends its "list of 38."

April 4, 2013: I guess we can add Fisker to the list; will fire 75% of work force; CEO resigned abruptly last week.

December 9, 2012: Chinese company buys what is left of A123. 

November 30, 2012: to the list of "36" in the original post, we can now add another solar company that has gone bust: Twin Creeks Technologies. This is their $26 million website. I assume this link will break soon -- the website is a single page, completely white except for a "sunburst" icon and "twincreeks technologies" all in lower case. That's the website. I can't make this stuff up. Here's the story:

Mississippi taxpayers may have only an empty Senatobia building and some solar panel equipment to show for nearly $26 million in loans provided to Twin Creeks Technologies.

The California-based solar technology firm is liquidating, and a company that bought Twin Creeks' assets does not intend to take over its agreement with Mississippi. The contract called for Twin Creeks to invest at least $132 million and create at least 500 jobs.

November 15, 2012: to the list of "36" in the original post, add the Nissan Leaf plant near Smyrna, TN.

October 30, 2012: $300,000/A123 job with government stimulus (best figure; it could be worse; depends "how" one counts) --

Battery maker A123 Systems vowed thousands of new jobs when it received a nearly quarter-billion-dollar stimulus grant in late 2009, but federal job-tracking figures show only a few hundred positions were created before the company joined a growing list of federally backed energy businesses that ended in bankruptcy.

The latest quarterly report on file with a federal stimulus tracking database shows just seven positions created through the grant from April to June this year. Previous quarters’ job reports contained anywhere from a handful of positions created to more than 100 new jobs.

But even when the quarterly reports are combined, a total of 408 new positions were reported under the stimulus program since 2009, amounting to more than $300,000 spent for each new job reported.

October 26, 2012: huge criminal investigation story involving Abound Solar; in the list of 37 below; 

It was one of Barack Obama’s favorite green-energy companies. And green-energy companies, according to the president, are one of the best ways to facilitate economic growth.

Well, yesterday, The Denver Post detailed the criminal investigation of Abound Solar, a defunct solar-panel manufacturer in Colorado that was run on taxpayer “investments,” for securities fraud, consumer fraud and financial misrepresentation.

Abound shuttered its Colorado plant during the summer and filed for bankruptcy, leaving “125 workers without jobs and taxpayers holding the bag for up to $60 million in defaulted loans.” (Human Events senior reporter Audrey Hudson has already detailed the efforts by the House to investigate the company.)

October 26, 2012: green-jobs stimulus programs waste cash -- Labor Secretary's inspector  general --

President Obama’s green jobs training program, which was part of his stimulus, has failed on most key jobs measures, according to a new internal audit that found it was training workers who already had jobs that didn’t need green energy skills, and was failing to place new enrollees in jobs once they finished the training.

The Labor Department’s inspector general also said grantees who received the green jobs-training money did a poor job of reporting their results.

Only 38 percent of those who have completed training got jobs based on it, and only 16 percent kept jobs for at least six months — the key measure of success for the program.

And more --

About half were already working in the energy sector and wanted retraining, and half were potential new energy workers.

Of those workers who already had energy-sector jobs, the auditors said they were retrained, even though they didn’t need it.

“We found no evidence that the incumbent workers in our sample required services or training to keep their job or obtain a new one,” the investigators said in their report.

Original Post 

A huge "thank you" to a reader for sending me these two links.

Link here to The Foundry.

Satcon Technology Corp. announced the decision in a Wednesday news release. “This has been a difficult time for Satcon,” president and CEO Steve Rhoades said. “After careful consideration of available alternatives, the Company’s Board of Directors determined that the Chapter 11 filings were a necessary and prudent step, allowing the Company to continue to operate while giving us the opportunity to reorganize with a stronger balance sheet and capital structure.” 

Satcon received a $3 million DOE grant in January to develop “a compact, lightweight power conversion device that is capable of taking utility-scale solar power and outputting it directly into the electric utility grid at distribution voltage levels—eliminating the need for large transformers.”

This is the second taxpayer-backed green energy company to file for bankruptcy this week. 

From the same source, different link:

So far, 36 companies that have received federal support from taxpayers have either gone bankrupt or are laying off workers and are heading for bankruptcy. This list includes only those companies that received federal money from the Obama Administration’s Department of Energy. [This is unnecessary, in my mind. It's irresponsible, regardless of whose administration.]

The amount of money indicated does not reflect how much was actually received or spent but how much was offered. The amount also does not include other state, local, and federal tax credits and subsidies, which push the amount of money these companies have received from taxpayers even higher.

The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:

1. Evergreen Solar ($24 million)*
2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
4. Beacon Power ($69 million)* -- see "update/correction" below
5. AES’s subsidiary Eastern Energy ($17.1 million) -- see "update/correction" below
6. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
7. SunPower ($1.5 billion)
8. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
9. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
10. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
11. Amonix ($5.9 million)
12. National Renewable Energy Lab ($200 million)
13. Fisker Automotive ($528 million)
14. Abound Solar ($374 million)*
15. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
16. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($6 million) -- see "update/correction" below
17. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
18. Schneider Electric ($86 million) -- see "update/correction" below
19. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
20. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
21. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
22. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
23. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
24. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
25. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
26. Thompson River Power ($6.4 million)*
27. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
28. LSP Energy ($2.1 billion)* -- see "update/correction" below
29. UniSolar ($100 million)* -- see "update/correction" below
30. Azure Dynamics ($120 million)* -- see "update/correction" below
31. GreenVolts ($500,000)
32. Vestas ($50 million)
33. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($150 million) -- see "correction" below
34. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
35. Navistar ($10 million)
36. Satcon ($3 million)*
37. Nissan Leaf battery facility, Smyrna, TN (see November 15, 2012, update above) 
38. Twin Creeks Technologies, Senatobia, MS ($26  million)* (see November 30, 2012, update above)

* Indicates filed for bankruptcy.

Of all the companies listed, this remains my favorite:

Twin Creeks Technologies. This is their $26 million website [update: surprisingly, this link is still up].  I assume this link will break soon -- the website is a single page, completely white except for a "sunburst" icon and "twincreeks technologies" all in lower case. That's the website. I can't make this stuff up. Here's the story:

Mississippi taxpayers may have only an empty Senatobia building and some solar panel equipment to show for nearly $26 million in loans provided to Twin Creeks Technologies.

The California-based solar technology firm is liquidating, and a company that bought Twin Creeks' assets does not intend to take over its agreement with Mississippi. The contract called for Twin Creeks to invest at least $132 million and create at least 500 jobs.

"Mississippi taxpayers may have only an empty Senatobia building and some solar panel equipment to show for nearly $26 million in loans" -- as you can see, this is not quite accurate. They also got a single page website with the logo.

Update: since the original list was posted, the source for this list, The Foundry, has noted some "corrections" which may affect the above list. None of the companies nor the government have contacted me to say the figures are incorrect. However, this from The Foundry:

Figures for four companies have been updated: Beacon Power received $43 million from the U.S. government, not $69 million as originally reported. Azure Dynamics received $5.4 million from the federal government, not $120 million as originally reported. Compact Power Inc. received $151 million as part of the stimulus, not $150 million as originally reported. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group received $700,981 in government funding, not $6 million as originally reported.

The following companies have been removed from the original list: AES’s subsidiary Eastern Energy, LSP Energy, Schneider Electric, and Uni-Solar did not receive government-backed loans, based on additional research. The National Renewable Energy Lab did received $200 million in stimulus funding, but it is a government laboratory.

************************

Miscellaneous Reports of Green-Energy-Taxpayer-Supported Industries Waste List

LG Chem, Holland, Michigan (regional link may break); Volt-battery maker; no work; employees playing cards to occupy their days;