[ExI] solargate: was RE: A Nobel laureate and climate change

[BillK]

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 9:51 PM, spike wrote:
> Solyndra did not reduce production costs, because they could not.  Read on
> please.
>
> No sane investor would have put money into Solyndra because their factory
> was in a non-right-to-work state.  We already had a local solar panel
> manufacturer, First Solar in Santa Clara, but it wisely located its factory
> in neighboring Arizona, which is a right-to-work state where labor prices
> are within reason.  In California, factory workers are forced to join the
> union.  Unions drive up wages and costs.



I been reading the reports about Solyndra and the financial people
don't appear to be claiming that wage costs were the big problem. Only
the traditional union bashers are doing this. The situation is
obviously confused and being investigated by the FBI. There may even
be fraud involved.

But their big problem seems to have been a technical problem.

They were trying to develop new cylinder-shaped solar devices, which
convert sunlight into electricity using a thin film made mainly of
copper, indium, gallium and selenium. Standard solar panels are flat
and made from silicon. The company said its product was easier to
install and lighter, giving it an edge over conventional panels,
especially for large rooftops that can’t handle the weight of flat
panels.

But their auditors didn't like the company accounts.
In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on March 16, 2010, Quote:
“The company has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative
cash flows since inception and has a net stockholders’ deficit,”
PricewaterhouseCoopers said.

The challenge facing Solyndra only increased as prices of the silicon
used in conventional solar panels from China fell, declining 30
percent this year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

“When polysilicon prices dropped Solyndra’s value proposition
evaporated,” Joseph Berwind, managing partner of Alternative Energy
Investing LLC in Summit, New Jersey, and the author of “Investing in
Solar Stocks,” said in an interview.
------------------------


So they gambled on a new technology, but prices dropped on the old
technology and so they ran out of money.


To me that seems a reasonable type of failure for a startup in a new
fast-changing industry.



BillK