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Thursday, June 28, 2012

Another One Bites the Dust -- At Least We're Cutting Our Losses

Another government-backed solar company declares bankruptcy.
Abound Solar Inc., a U.S. solar manufacturer that was awarded a $400 million U.S. loan guarantee, will suspend operations and file for bankruptcy because its panels were too expensive to compete.

Abound borrowed about $70 million against the guarantee, the Loveland, Colorado-based company said today in a statement. It plans to file for bankruptcy protection in Wilmington, Delaware, next week.

The failure will follow that of Solyndra LLC, which shut down in August after receiving a $535 million loan guarantee from the same U.S. Energy Department program. Abound stopped production in February to focus on reducing costs after a global oversupply and increasing competition from China drove down the price of solar panels by half last year. 
I'm not exactly sure what it means to "stop production to focus on reducing costs."  Stopping production will certainly cut costs. Maybe I'm missing something. I think what they meant to say:
Abound stopped production in February to focus on how to tell the President it aint' gonna work and to start writing press releases to blame it on the Chinese.

7 comments:

  1. this is manufacturing lingo to Fire all the hard working shop employees, and spend the rest of the money they have on hand doing redesign of the product . This may then allow them to Re -apply for another round of Govermint grants/loans .

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    1. That sounds about right. One thing I learned in the Air Force: some folks got very, very good at writing grant applications.

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  2. Frankly, all green energy run in the red...

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  3. Blame it on the Chinese?? I'm still laughing at that line.

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  4. "All green energy run in the red..." I wonder why google and apple are investing so heavily in green energy then (not just investing but using the technology). Yeah, they're pretty unsuccessful companies. I'm sure you know better than they do.

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    1. Google and Apple are the few companies that can afford the cost of solar. It helps explain why these two companies hoard huge amounts of cash.

      Seriously, for niche players, and for those who can take tax deductions, solar will make sense in some cases. Tech companies with server farms (like Apple and Google) use a huge amount of energy. They will use multiple sources. They probably won't use solar panels from Abound Solar or Solyndra.

      It would be interesting to see if Google and Apple bought their solar panels from China. My hunch ....

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