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?
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?