How to be awarded and then lose $535M

C

ColonelHaiku

True Classic
Here's an announcement made on August 15, 2011:
"The Sustainable Business Institute is hosting a Sustainable Business User Group event at Solyndra with a tour of the factory. SBUG is a gathering for business people from different industries to share their experiences incorporating sustainability within their respective companies. Hosted by EBAY, Google, Cisco, and HP in the past, SBUG encourages bimonthly education and networking amongst internal stakeholders interested in achieving sustainability."
​
http://events.mercurynews.com/fremo...tainable-business-practices-and-tour-solyndra

Yes, let's all take a tour of Solyndra to see how a company can take $535,000,000 taxpayer dollars and flush it down the crapper!

Solyndra was a manufacturer of solar technology in Fremont, Ca. and they just closed their doors and laid off 1,1000 workers. It is the 4th major solar technology manufacturer in America to go teats up in the last year.

It's always fun to gamble with other people's money.
 
Solyndra in The News

Solyndra reps made 20 visits to the White House before securing their $535,000,000 grant and now it appears they've just been raided by the FBI. Geeze... I certainly hope they have those incriminating documents in a safe place!

Gosh, a real cynic might conclude that the Obama administration is trying to cover its *$$ by sending the FBI on a raid.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/8/fbi-raids-solar-panel-company-hailed-by-obama/
 
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OK, time out. Analyze what really happened here, by starting on the other end of the planet. Did you know that there's an unwritten requirement that to be a Chinese Politburo member, a science-based background is preferred? I wasn't aware of this until recently, it's something like in the 90% range hold a engineering, pure science or technical degree of some kind. Now put the corruption that the Chinese are famous for aside for a moment, and look at the way they methodically make their decisions and set long term policy.

The Chinese know two things about their (our) present energy model. Oil is finite, and the fat lady is clearing her throat. The other is, without being fettered by politics, they have concluded the use of hydrocarbons is having an environmental impact.

Could these conclusions be the impetus for the policy direction they are now following? The reason they are fully invested in both wind and solar? They see a future for alternative, both practical and business. They want you as their customer.

The truth is, they are cheaply dumping solar cells on the world market. Solyndra certainly won't be the last to go out. Take a guess who's looking at purchasing the newly built factory (with our trimming lasers)? Yep, if you said the Chinese, you're right. This is not a case of badly investing in our future. Someone clearly ignored (or did they?) what was going on in the industry. If there was a case for protection from cheap imports, this is it. The domestic solar industry will be totally decimated in under a year. If you live by the Walmart approach and play the 'I want to pay as little as possible for it' consumer, you're in luck. The price of a solar installation is going to plunge. The installation and labor will likely cost more than the actual material. But again, it looks like we just got cut out of being a major supplier of the next energy revolution. Meet the new OPEC.
 
The Colonel has a new policy....

on the validity of comments based on some kind of 'in the trenches' experience. I believe you are in those trenches, so could you please state your qualifications for making any remarks on the subject of the post. Thanks! This will allow all of us to separate the wheat and chaff more easily.

By the way, the Economist posted a graph last week showing in a strark manner your point exactly. The Chinese do not build the most sophisticated solar panels but, boy, do they build a lot of cheap ones.
 
Small prediction, since politicians are all grandstanding with elections in mind. If the Solyndra issue stays in the news and the public gets outraged, some will start calling for some form of protectionism. Things are going to get interesting. It may not stop at solar cells. The calls for some form of protectionism may extend to rubber duckies.

Anyway, to answer your question. I work for what most people would classify as a small company, under 50 employees. Most of us have degrees in EE or applied physics. We are a third party provider of equipment, maintenance and engineering consulting. That’s the likely reason we’ve had 18 months of growth. There is cost cutting everywhere, and some margins are thin, mostly here in North America. Going with OEM’s can be expensive, so the semiconductor companies (and other industries) search out 3rd party vendors. I can’t mention names, but some of newly acquired customers in the last year are heavy hitters in the arena. The production engineers I speak to all have the same gripe, which I outlined in the earlier post: Domestic PV manufacturers are being undercut by cheap imports. Yes, you’re right, those imports can be cheaply made/assembled in most cases. They also seem to be prone to premature degradation, which no doubt gives the PV industry a bad rap and those in the anti-solar arena ammunition for their argument. The part that personally angers me in all of this is the majority of the major breakthroughs are made here, yet somehow, the technology always manages to be implemented (sold out?) somewhere else. No one has the cojones to begin slapping shackles on the imports, for fear of some tariff war. For example: Take local company Spectrolab (not a customer). These guys broke the efficiency record for cells awhile back, coming in at almost 42%. That’s like the holy grail to the industry. If you can get that level of conversion in mass produced cells, cheaply, it’s viable against other sources of energy. Boeing (not a customer in this field) made plans to start production on cells in the high 30% range. I think their plans have now stalled. By the way, anyone need a tattoo removed? Before I moved into the manufacturing/semiconductor area, I was in the photonic biotech instrumentation industry. I became quite adept at wielding a laser wand. It won’t hurt, I promise. :devil:
 
I think your credentials....

are sterling and will look to you for all things tech from now on:)

Very interesting about the 42% efficiency that company acheived. I for one would risk a trade war tomorrow to protect American innovation-but the free marketeers are not going to allow that.
 
who knew

that simply going out of business was a federal crime! Coupefan, I'm aware of several solar energy-related companies going under over the course of the last several months and of the pressures exerted on the market by China, but I have a question: what do you know of Solyndra? I've read that several analysts had issues with their business model and that Solyndra was touting tube cells that had unlimited exposure to the Sun due to their geometric shape (may be a better way to describe it). Is that the case?

My original point (which seemed to befuddle NFC's resident contrarian) was that this might be a "follow the money" case. And it's now being reported that the Feds are raiding the houses of the company's execs...

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/feds-raid-homes-solyndra-ceo-execs/story?id=14476848
 
Your original point...

was the same as most of the others that you post-just anything that looks, sounds or smells bad for Obama. It doesn't go much deeper than that. The lyrics change but the tune is always the same. As has been said time and again in here -we really do understand that you don't like Obama, just counting the ways you don't like him is not very interesting.
 
Traditional arrays present their working end in a planar configuration. It's really a compromise, and if you want to be efficient and capture more of the sun's available output during the day, you need to alter the direction to track with the sun. You only see these tracking systems in high end installations by the way. Solyndra's idea gets rid of any tracking system, since they don't use a flat panel set up. A tubular, not planar, arrangement will collect sunlight from all angles, even underneath if the tube is mounted on a surface painted with white paint. Another benefit is the surface area afforded by that design. Take a cardboard toilet paper tube. Look at the side profile. That surface area is identical to a flat panel--think in 2D here. But if we cut it length-wise and spread it out, now look at the collection surface area. A tube PV has more surface area, while taking up less physical space.

It's a great idea, it maximizes collection area while at the same time minimizes the mounting real estate required. It also forgos the need for a complicated and expensive tracking system. It's too bad really. Someone else is going to be building it now.
 
Thanks for the info

Given the ability of China to do what you've described, this seems to be quite a challenge.

Does the practical application support the benefits you've described? Or were they (Solyndra) not able to stay in biz long enough to prove that?
 
The solar cells they manufacture are built from thin film deposition, which is a very mature process. Ever notice the lights they line an airport runway with? Back in the late 90's, I knew a guy who was coating prisms in a vacuum chamber, in his garage. These prisms (once final assembly was completed) were destined for airport runway lights. The coating had to be tough enough to survive in that environment. He did really well there while he had the contract.

Solyndra had a simple and elegant solution to raise efficiency, maximize overall system effectiveness and minimize maintenance. They just didn't have enough time to market it before they were undercut by the dumping. It's a shame things like that get in the way of true technological progress. It makes me wonder, if such practices were not in place, were humanity would be today.
 
It ain't pretty....

and it ain't very deniable anymore. The question is whether it is too complicated to sell to anyone who isn't already rabidly opposed to Obama. Maybe it could be. But maybe it can be made to look like good intentions gone wrong(which might be at least partially so).
It is nevertheless,indicative of his pattern at the start of the administration when Rahm was around-set a goal, set a date to meet it and then meet it and let the devil-take-the-hindmost and don't get too worried about the details. Wasn't that really the story of the Health Reform? What was the big hurry on any of this stuff even to those who basically agreed with the programs? Mystifying. He might pay big for this depending on how it is framed and depending on how much crediblity the GOP can muster up behind it. It is probably not too different from day-to-day proceedings all over Washington but that is no real defence.
 
Or the Texas way...

Medicare Drug law
No bid contracts for Halliburton

It's just all the same old stuff where we allow our election dynamics to be pushed around by the most money. Instead of taking the democracy by the horns and getting rid of a few bad features we add more-making corporations 'individuals' and giving them even greater leverage.
How about a completely public funded campaign with a 90 day limit and mandatory voting. Even some 'backwards' countries have the good sense to know that left to its own devices the 'democratic' process just becomes oligarchy by another name. Instead we pat ourselves on the back for all this 'freedom' and then bemoan the inevitable outcomes of power concentration and undue influence.
All that being said the 'optics' are very bad-the substance is arguably worse.
 
Just cut and paste...

the whole Google news page on this subject and save yourself a lot of time. Are you under the impression that this story is not headline news?
 
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