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Government investment disaster in the works??
UPDATE:
Solyndra has gone BK!! I got this one right....
Link to bloomberg story:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-31/solyndra-to-file-for-bankruptcy...
Read on. This is a very important story!
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Solar stocks have been a terrible investment over the past few years. Some of the big public names have been hammered.
FSLR = -65%
LDK = -88%
ESLR = -100%
SPWR = -88%
Bloomberg had a story today on this. The bottom line:
The solar-equipment industry is beginning a consolidation that’s already the biggest in at least two years as plunging prices for photovoltaic systems force weaker companies to team with competitors or close shop.
From personal involvement I can add a bit of “color” to the story. Both China Inc. and Euro Inc. solar panel manufactures are willing to provide 100% of the financing (including “soft” costs) for a viable project. What better evidence could you find that there is a very big imbalance of supply and demand?
The fundamental issue is that solar panels are a low tech. commodity product. It’s very difficult to make a buck when that is the case.
These points all lead me to wonder about a big company in this space, Solyndra. This is a private company. I don’t have any financials to look at as a result. Neither do you. But you should, this company is heavily indebted to Uncle Sam.
There was a big announcement at Solyndra the other day. I think that this is a sign of some problems. This from August 19th:
Mr. Gronet was the CEO and Chairman of Solyndra. He was also the founder. He is Ex AMD. When he left in 2005 he had money in his pocket. That (and some VC money) was the capital that got Solyndra going.
It sure strikes me odd that he would be leaving right now. There has been no replacement named. That strikes me odd too.
As I said, there are no current numbers to look at. Solyndra tried to go public back in June 2010. There was a “Red Herring” stock prospectus that was circulated. There was no interest in the deal so it got pulled ("Unfavorable market conditions" was the excuse given) The SEC registration statement (S-1) for the proposed deal was also pulled from the public.
What was in the prospectus was, no doubt, the real reason that investor chose to take a ‘pass’ on the deal. There were revenue/expense numbers for the nine months preceding the proposed deal:
Revenue: $58.8mm
Cost of Goods Sold: $108.0mm
That is an absolute complete disaster. This is a low margin business to begin with. At Solyndra they were losing 84 cents for every dollar of sales. Adding in SG&A and CapEx the losses and cash drain had to be very heavy.
Of course, that’s just me guessing. I repeat, there are no numbers on this company. And that is the crux of the problem. There should be numbers available to the public. After all, the company has been financed by the Department of Energy for years. To make it worse, the funding has come from the Treasury Department’s own private bank. The Federal Financing Bank. Solyndra’s out-standings with the FFB/DOE as of July totaled $530 million. The rates for these advances are clearly subsidized. Consider the interest rate on this $2.5mm loan.
The pattern of subsidized financing is also clear from the FFB reports from January through June 2011.
You would think that with all this money and all these question marks someone in D.C. would be looking into all of this. There actually has been an effort to uncover some facts. But it went no place at all.
On June 27th the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing. On top of the agenda was Solyndra. Jeffrey Zients (Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director) failed to show for the hearing to discuss OMB's role in the Solyndra DOE Loan Guarantee process. He sent a letter saying he had a scheduling conflict. A scheduling conflict? Give me a break!
Of note were the comments by the Chair of the committee, Cliff Stevens (R-Fla) who said that if the OMB refuses to comply in the coming weeks he would issue a subpoena to force disclosure. While I’m not holding my breath for this to happen, a showdown on Solyndra is coming. Keep in mind that the Boss/Owner (Pictured with O) just took a powder a few days ago.
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Side Notes:
From ABC news:
The loan guarantee, the administration's first for a clean energy project, benefited a company whose prime financial backers include Oklahoma oil billionaire George Kaiser, a "bundler" of campaign donations. Kaiser raised at least $50,000 for the president's 2008 election effort.
In one of those “twist of fates” you hear about; back in April of 2008 Senator Hillary Clinton exposed the Kaiser/Obama connection while she was battling the big O in the Arizona primary. Obama was running an ad that said:
“I don’t take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists”
The Clinton campaign made a big deal of this and pointed squarely at George Kaiser and the fact that he was raising big bucks for O’s campaign.
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a relative was doing business in China a few years ago, they tried to pay him in solar panels. he says they have a glut of older style panels, which he says will not be replaced by anything cheaper or better for some years to come. apparently the manufacturing process which refines the silicon is very dirty, and not likely to pass any US EPA standards. for the moment anyway there is a lot of product and China as always is willing to dump onto our market.
disclosure we took the money out the bank (at 0.001% interest) and invested in a solar system which completely offsets our electric bill, which is somewhere between a 5 and 10% return on investment.
Solar technology is one I'd like to see survive. Bring the panel and battery cost down, and get them installed in sun-rich states in the south and west. This is clean energy and it's far better than the current foreign oil abomination, in which the U.S. is in OPEC's grip. Every little bit helps.
Also, this Administration's energy policy is a disaster. If I were in the Oval Office, I would have unleashed natural gas drilling and oil drilling. Also sped up a few nuclear plants (not on fault lines). Let the energy companies produce. Then summon the major trucking companies and strike a deal to convert a portion of their fleet to natural gas, which America has in abundance. Then get the gas stations to install a natural gas pump. This is not difficult, these natural gas pumps already are accessible in California. This would not only employ Americans using American resources, but it also would lessen our foreign energy dependence. Heck, even put a small tax on natural gas sales, and earmark the tax revenue for additional private-sector research into nuclear, coal, oil, solar, etc. Patent the results and lay the energy groundwork for future Americans. Why the hell doesn't Obama do this?
PS one of my colleagues has a natural gas-powered car. Works great. $10 bucks to fill it, unbelievably cheap, runs great too. This would be an enormous savings to American families, if only this goddamned Administration would do something besides funnel money to scumbag bankers.
As far as I know nobody inthe south or west uses oil to generate electricity for their homes.
Because he's a dumbass
There's a reason why the rest of the world isn't using nat gas for their vehicles. It has nothing to do with any US administration.
I do agree with you that solar should be a bigger part of the energy pie in the sunny states and wind energy across the Rockies, coasts and midwest.
Go see the film "Gasland" and then come back and say you want to "unleash natural gas"
get informed before you spout
Michael Moore type propaganda
http://www.energyindepth.org/2010/06/debunking-gasland/
No nukes using shit GE or Westinghouse technology. There is safer nuke tech. You are incredibly naive if you think Obama is doing anything positive for the USA. His whole family are illegal aliens.
Dude...chill...we're saving our reserves until everyone else's runs out.
And we're burning plenty of carbon that according to the moonbat global warmers will help ward off the next ice age, which is long overdue.
Yeah, actual scientists aware of the looong history of the earth's climate know the cold hard fact that we live in an "interglacial" period now, so named because for a really long series of cycles now the ice ages between warm periods have lasted much much longer than the short warm periods similar to the present one.
The almost-commander in chief Al Gore, raging moonbat and hypocrite extraordinaire, showed us pictures of parts of Manhattan underwater...just parts of Manhattan. How about a mile thick sheet of ice scraping every human habitation in new england off the continental shelf into the Atlantic? When should this happen? Interglacial periods have lasted 8 to 10 thousand years, and we are going on 12 thousand now.
So go to my website burnsometires.com and light up. You can get a complementary christmas blu-ray of your own personal tire fire to run in a loop starting the day after Thanksgiving, giving you that warm feeling you are doing your part to ward off a freezing catastrophe far more grave than a bit of warming, which would be A Good Thing all told.
Here's the problem with converting our car fleets to natural gas - right now we have X amount of years of natural gas at the current rate of consumption. But if we increase our demand for natural gas by a factor of 5-10 by converting our cars to natural gas, the rate of depletion of our supplies of natural gas goes up by the same rate. It's a dead-end. We would spend an enormous amount of capital converting our cars, and then what do we do 10-15 years down the road when we start running out of natural gas? It's another non-solution to our energy problem because you can't scale it up large enough to meet our needs over the long term.
Natural gas pumps may not be difficult, but who can afford them? The city nearest me is spending $100k this year to put one in (for two small buses).
Besides, it is likely only economical on a massive scale as long as the producers are allowed to destroy the ground structure/water table with fracking. Like Fukushima, some costs are simply unaffordable, once they materialize.
my trash pickup company is converting their diesel trucks to natgas. we already have a couple places open to the public, on the grounds of a local power plant. looked into this, i think the only automobile currently able to run Natgas is a Honda.
apparently we will have to wait until after Obama to get things rolling, even Bush was more on the ball than this guy
I have designed and built EFI, electronic fuel injection, controllers for everyday use cars; I can easily build a Natural Gas Covversion that willl be more effecient than your friends; but it's pointless, you can't register it or drive it in California. It has to be done by individuals one at a time. then, even if you live in a natural gas area, you're going to get slammed for "avoiding" highway fuel taxes. Fucking Governments make everything impossible. Did you know that if you simply changed the Federal Catalytic Converter regulation, shit canned it, the whole country could burn millions of gallons of gasolene less a year? Your engine controller burns an unnecessarily rich mixture just to keep the converter "lit"; This is "good" if you're an environmental freak, (and poorly educated, but they tend to go together), but actually its madness.
need to know more about converting my older GM (fuel injected) into Natgas. where do i go, and when i pay my registration nobody is looking under the hood.
@ the grateful,
+ 1
Even PERU has been converting much of its (Lima) taxi fleet to natgas. They have been doing this over 5 years! And they are poor! Why can't we pick some low hanging fruit re converting some of OUR fleets to natgas?:
-- municipal vehicles (buses, utility co. trucks, etc.)
-- city taxi fleets (like Lima)
-- trucks mostly crossing the country on the Interstates
This seems to be a brain-dead solution that is being ignored.
The purpose of a system is what it does. In case you haven't noticed, the US Govt's purpose doesn't appear to be promoting common sense!
Civic GZ starts at $25,490, gets 24/36 mpg with a 113 hp/109 torque engine and 7.8 gallon tank at 3600 psi for a range of 187 to 280 miles per fillup per stations few and far between despite Picken's CLNE targeting $14 to $20:
http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-gx/
CNG is 2.06 a gallon, so thats' a nice savings. they also have home CNG compressors, and there is an energy incentive program to purchase but not sure what they cost, or how much they bring down the cost of the fuel. if one guy had a compressor he could service his neighborhood. no shipping premium involved. not sure where POTUS is but this is the real deal in my op. enough of those battery cars with rare earth minerals and grid losses.
with current passion for dergulation of everything in the U.S., you should think twice about having a natural gas compressor in your neighborhood.
Gas is an amazing explosive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_East_Ohio_Gas_explosion
and here for pictures of firestorm
http://allthingsclevelandohio.blogspot.com/2008/12/cleveland-east-ohio-g...
The problem with explosive substances, is you don't often get a chance to learn from your mistakes.
these guys make large scale compressors for muni and corporate clients. there are federal and state rebate incentives.
Oh, come on. Do you really find it worthwhile to discuss the machinations of puppets?
Someday perhaps, you might realize that is the REAL problem.
The geothermal stocks are just as bad. Quite apart from that, I have found it exceedingly difficult to make money in any energy stocks, not having deep enough pockets to buy pure oil futures like the hedge funds.
From what I've noticed (admittedly not much), it seems they are either dependent on DOE grants, big bank financing, or both.
Not even a fully functioning power plant has done much to help Nevada Geothermal. It looks like it only provides value for bankers and politicians.
I'm shocked that campaign contributors expect a return on their investment.
<sarcasm off>
Any candidate accepting any corporate or aggregator money is by definition corrupt. Yet we keep playing this game. How many of you complaining about Bush's oil, ag and pharma deals, or Obama's solar or Wall Street deals, relied on the "campaign season" to tell you who to vote for? Probably most of you. How many of you voted for candidates who don't accept campaign donations from corporations or aggregators? Probably none of you.
The solution is simple. The internet is free. There is no reason why a candidate needs to raise a penny to get his message out or to solicit votes. He just needs interested voters to forward his emails and visit his website. And then to vote.
Internet is free - huh?
Not free as in "free beer", but free as in "open to all."
I put in a 5000 KW system, a solar water heater, and a solar attic fan last month. I love it. Basically, I've guaranteed the price of my power for as long as I live in the house. The only subsidy money I received was from the power company on the hot water. The state of Florida no longer subsidizes solar power - though I'm told I can make a claim come tax time with the feds.
Other than that, all I can say is that watching my power meter run backwards has been fun.
5000KW eh? 5 megawatts? you have your own nuclear reactor? Solar water heaters are practical. Solar electricity, not so much. Of course, Florida is much better than Germany ! I worked in the Solar/alternate energy field here in Hawaii for a few years; just part time; I figured, what the hell I know what I'm doing I may as well straighten out the enthusiasts who ran the store, and didn't know what they were doing. It was interesting; but educating the public is hard work and underpaid. Hawaii is a very poor solar pay-back location; it varies tremendously from location to location, but a huge amount of the Island clouds over at noon and rains at least part of the afternoon; that's where all the famous flowers and other green stuff comes from; from the rain.
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A 5000KW system...damn, that 5 MW thats enought to power a couple hundred homes. Bet your neighbors love you!
You're right. Sorry. No, I'm not powering all the neighbors - though the idea is oddly appealing. It's just 5000 watts not kilowatts. If I knew how to insert a picture into this, I'd post a pic of the panels on my roof and of the giant inverter box.
yes, but what happens when the grid goes down, as it most surely will within the next year or two. You need a battery bank, blood, and a bimodal system...
Hi SuperRay. You are correct if the system you have installed is a grid tie system. To run the power company meter backwards, it must be a grid tie system - and that is what I have. But, I also had a solar generator installed with the system. It runs off the existing panels that I bought for the grid tie system so was not as expensive to have installed as if it were a stand alone purchase. The solar generator will power a fridge, a fan, a TV/radio, an oven, washing machine and a microwave, though most of that has to be run one at a time or the system will wear down quickly if there is no sun present. Unfortunately, it is not enough to power the air-conditioner for the house. The solar generator is tied directly into the house wiring system.
what is a solar generator? I have never heard of such a device, the only one I'm aware of is the sun.
Do you have a diagram of your system that you can post online somewhere?
For those interested in solar and other types of power for home use, I recommend very highly "HomePower" magazine.
http://homepower.com/home/
Excellent overview and great articles - online subs available where you can download your issue, instead of mail delivery.
Here you go. http://www.americansolarenergy.com/solar-generator.html
Hope that helps. I didn't have to buy panels for the solar generator because I bought panels for my grid tie system. The generator just runs off those.
Why would the grid going down affect a system in place? If your meter is going backward, you have electricity you can sell to a neighbor. Not having power when it is dark is the only consequence, and you can get a battery charger that works when the sun shines? Am I missing something?
Nope. My place is completely solar PV (and backup generator) powered and has been since 1980, with good quality polycrystalline panels from Solarex. (the new thin film junk from China or wherever has short life and sucks in quality) Even the oldest ones still work great. We use Rolls batteries, Xantrex inverters, and my own design charge controllers and generators. I run my machine shop, two houses, a physics lab, etc all off the two installed systems here. Not all at once -- there's only one of me, so I can either run machines, weld, or do physics at one time in general. Also a pretty heavy duty computer network I use to support all those, and for trading. It works great, does require a little adapting to the weather, but so what? As a result of having "no bills" I don't need a wage job, don't need to commute to write software and such, and can easily just not do things like welding and milling when the sun ain't shining.
It's kind of fun to have the neighbors come over to watch TV when their less reliable grid power goes down and they just gotta see their putrid show, or bring their freezer contents to save (I get a cut out of that). I'm thinking of buying a Volt to store excess power I frequently have and to use as a self propelled backup generator as well == being an EE among other things, it shouldn't be too hard to integrate it into the overall system and ride free at least in spring and summer.
And while I probably have the lowest carbon footprint here, it's not about being green in my case (though they are fun when they assume I'm one of them - not).I heat off my woodlot, and next year's heat is "in the bank" already. So is next year's food from the garden and game. A more conservative lifestyle in the old sense of that word, not the new fascist right-wing-nut or green redefinition. More like spend less than you make, look before you leap, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it conservatism.
It's about power over my own life. With no grid connection, no power company enforcement of building codes/permits. Taxes on non-dwellings (which all of them are despite occupancy) are much less, and so on. the system pays for itself in numerous ways, not least is peace of mind and reliablity.
DCF,
Nice post and enjoyable to read. Nice to know that someone is doing something besides just talking. Thank you for your effort to balance the equation regadless of your reasons om
I know where you are coming from. I have been off the grid for over 7 years.
Just like everything in life.....
PRODUCE MORE THAN YOU CONSUME!
( debt excluded )
Nice. We could definitely get along. I would say though, for me, while I'm no "green redefinition" or anything like that, I am sort of jazzed about reducing my family's carbon footprint.
Overheard the TOTUS the other day:
"uh, er, uh green jobs, yah that's the ticket. The clean coal and the children. Battery fan powered golf carts for all. Er, uh jobs, yah free college and homes for the serfs er, uh peoples"
Teleprompter : "...and you can witness that our green jobs program has been tested elsewhere before, take Spain for instance".
How can $6/W (Solyndra) compete with 0.90 $/W (Chinese)? DoE is looking for a place to hide.
Crooks.
http://www.sunelec.com/solar-panels-c-5.html
Just another example of who the government really serves....oil industry, banksters, AIPAC, defense industry....under every rock is a parasite.
That's the economy we've built. Everyone extracts rents or lives on the skim.
If it makes you feel good......who cares how much it costs someone else?
That's right, Gromit ! It's all cheese ! a lovely bit of free cheese.
The PV technology was discovered in the 19th century....about the same time as the first switching element, the vacuum tube. And look at the difference between those two. transistors replaced vacuum tubes and logic became so cheap that today, nobody even knows what the cpu is in their insanely cheap NON govt subsidized computer or smartphone....
yet, PVs STILL cannot economically survive without govt subsidy. It simply is not ready for release. All the money we have subsidized is theft from taxpayers. It is horrible mal-investment. There should be nuremberg trials for capital crimes.
I disagree that the germans are good at this. Solarworld stock has gone from nearly 70 to $5. China? Like that is any economic certainty.
The fact is PV is uneconomical and we should quit applying semiconductor logic to something that Moore's Law doesn't apply.
I want some claw back.
PV is NOT uneconomical, see my other post above. What it is is a pay-first, then benefit system, and humans have no discipline, and would rather be taken to the cleaners by the rent-seeking power company than pay now for benefits later. It's the financial system that's broken -- working that side would have been better for all concerned than what they did "innovate" on, wouldn't you say? I've had free electricity and lower taxes and other outlays since 1980 when I went solar. It's paid for itself many times over already, and still works great, even using the older tech available back then, which was, frankly, far higher in quality than the new stuff, and most obviously, a lot longer lived.
govt is a very small buyer of computer hardware and software. they are 22% oc cisco's sale. They are a miniscule percentate of semiconductor sales. But even this is close to market price, set by the private sector, not a below market subsidy.
My point about "priming the pump" is that it doesn't work for PV. Its physics. You can't shrink PV like a transistor. In the 80's line widths were 5 microns. Now? they have been reduced somewhere between a 100 and 1000 times...
What is wrong with corn as an alt energy? Expense.
What is wrong with PV? expense.
I love alt energy. Lets just pursue the RIGHT alt energy. So far, PV is not there, yet and with over one hundred years of research, it appears it will never get there.