Solyndra: Obama-Showcased, Recently-Completed, 1100-Employee Solar Plant To File Chapter 11 – Spectacular Debacle!

Solyndra to file Chapter 11 (Solyndra press release photo)

Call it a green embarassment of spectacular dimensions. Don’t expect national media coverage here.

Despite all the massive subsidies, incentives and bureaucratic favors, which were supposed to guarantee the venture’s long-term success, Fremont California-based solar cell manufacturer Solyndra still went bankrupt, read here.

Hat-tip: reader Freddie.

In May 2010 the plant was used by Obama in a photo-op to showcase the promised green prosperity that we were (and are still) supposed to openly embrace and expect for the future.

How many more Soviet-style grand failures of this scale are we going to need before policymakers wake up to this green mirage of prosperity?

Solyndra is bankrupt, and likely gone are its 1100 jobs and the hopes and dreams held by its workers and their families. According to the Swiss online bluewin.ch/:

Solyndra was a showcase for the government’s investment in environmentally friendly technologies. The company received more than half a billion dollars in state credit guarantees. Among others, President Obama, former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Energy Secretary Steven Chu visited the plant.”

According to san francisco.cbslocal.com here/:

Solyndra said as a result of the suspension of operations, some 1,100 full-time and temporary employees were being laid off effective immediately.

Solyndra workers learned as they arrived at the office that the recently-completed Fremont factory where they worked would be closing immediately.”

I heard of this news from an obscure Swiss news outlet, and not a peep from the national MSM. The MSM we recall are too busy hyping up tropical storms into “monster hurricanes of the century” and propping up the climate change hoax, which in turn leads to mega-failures like Solyndra. So is the media today.

Meanwhile the US economy is falling apart and people are losing hope with every false promise politicians make. The green economy is total pie-in-the sky. Sadly 1100 employees and their families are finding this out the hard way.

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UPDATE: Slowly some German MSM is getting around to revealing the news:
handelsblatt.com
FAZ (scroll down near bottom)

12 responses to “Solyndra: Obama-Showcased, Recently-Completed, 1100-Employee Solar Plant To File Chapter 11 – Spectacular Debacle!”

  1. Harry Dale Huffman

    They should check to see if the CEO or CFO of this company, or other key figures, maybe didn’t pocket exceptionally large paychecks or other artfully crafted bonuses before that half billion in credit disappeared into the bowels of wall street or Swiss banks. Just how long did this company struggle to survive, or did the top echelon simply dive out the window, as it were, with a hefty percentage of the money “lost”, at the earliest opportunity? The fact that it is in California in itself makes me suspicious. The woods are full of financial flim-flam these days.

  2. Ulrich Elkmann

    Even if the company had not tanked spectacularly – is spending almost half a million $$/€€ to create a single job a sensible economic option? Or just an irresponsible way of proving the foolishness of Keynesian incentive spending?

  3. DirkH

    They moved from their first plant to the second one, highly automated, with much fanfare a while ago. Wonder what becomes of all the advanced machinery. Scrapyard probably. (BTW this also explains the high price tag for one job created: Even though their product failed to compete in the end, they did their best to produce it with as little manual labor as possible – in other words, they used the money given to them for creating Green Jobs to AVOID creating such jobs.)

    1. Ed Caryl

      Dirk, if history is repeated, the machinery will be sold and shipped to China, creating Green Jobs there.

      1. DirkH

        You’re right, there’s a thriving machine tourism business. Germany sends its old production lines and machines to Poland and Turkey, for instance.

  4. Joe

    Well they generated $137 000 in donations to the Obama campaign in 2008, and also happened to get some nice loans from the Federal government.

    It’s too bad for O that they’re out of business, because some of that loan money would have been kicked back to him in the form of bonusses to those on the staff who in turn donate that money to the campaign.

    Think of it as “recycling”.

    http://dailycaller.com/2011/09/01/bankrupt-solar-company-with-fed-backing-has-cozy-ties-to-obama-admin/

  5. DirkH

    But… but… where’s my greenhouse with integrated solar power now…?

    http://cleantechnica.com/2010/05/02/italian-greenhouse-will-produce-food-and-solar-power-too/

    Projects like this show that it’s about graft, not energy production.

  6. GregO

    Congress is investigating:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/after-solyndra-failure-auditors-wonder-what-other-bad-bets-obama-officials-made/2011/09/01/gIQALMlnuJ_story.html

    Yup. Turned people out on the street…

    http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Solyndra-Shutting-Down-128802718.html

    I remember when they first went into operation; I think they moved into a former auto assy plant and it was going to be the next big thing in Silicon Valley.

    My business contacts there mentioned that it was next to impossible to get in and make any kind of pitch which is a little weird for a bigish operation like that. Usually those big outfits at least have a vendor day once a month or so if only to keep up the PR; but Solyndra was very closed.

    Kind of opens up a line of reasoning that they were never anything but a high tech buzz company writ large that actually does nothing but function as a kind of Ponzi scheme. Unfortunately this is all too often a modis operandi of “tech”, “solar” and “alternative energy” companies (schemes).

    I wonder what the Republicans will find?

  7. Rich

    There’s some industry analysis here:
    http://www.compoundsemiconductor.net/csc/news-details/id/19733965/name/No-surprise-with-CIGS-startup-Solyndra-shutdown.html

    I noticed particularly:

    “IMS Research recently announced that its latest round of quarterly research reveals that Chinese module suppliers have strengthened their position in the market and that the market is showing signs of consolidation. Competition is only going to hot up.

    The PV module industry has recently suffered from a huge oversupply, which has led to fierce price competition with average prices dropping by around 20% in a single quarter. Of course, this will not have helped Solyndra in its bid to compete, and was cited as one of the reasons for its closure.”

    So not so much a failure of solar power per se but one company’s failure in competition with more successful companies, mostly Chinese.

    1. DirkH

      The price decay will continue with 20% a year.

  8. Billy

    How could the President and administration possibly know that the dastardly Chinese manufacturers had already saturated the market and could drive the price down further? After all he does live in a bubble of ideology.

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