Despite glowing press clippings
in which the CEO of Colorado-based Abound Solar claimed seven months
ago that his company was the “anti-Solyndra,” the green-energy firm has
filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation. It is terminating all 125
workers at its Loveland, Colo. headquarters, and is blaming China for its failure.
The U.S. Department of Energy awarded Abound Solar a $400 million loan guarantee in December 2010, funds that the then-three-year-old startup said it would use to compete with solar panel industry leader First Solar.
The company had tapped into about $70 million of those funds by August 2011 when the DOE unplugged it from the taxpayers’ cash stream, around the same time the more famous Solyndra went bankrupt. That company ate through $535 million in loans guaranteed by the federal government before it failed.
While cheap imports from China have crippled much of the U.S. solar panel market, Abound’s problems appear to have been rooted in the quality of its own products, the competitiveness of its business model and its inability to retain top talent.
In May, the Colorado Watchdog blog published an internal Abound Solar email revealing that in November 2010, the company dispatched an engineering technician to remove an entire rooftop of defective solar panels from the investment headquarters of wealthy Democratic benefactor Pat Stryker. Bohemian Companies, Stryker’s investment firm, was among the early investors that brought Abound approximately $300 million in startup capital.
The email directed the technician to retrieve “two unused” panels for “FA” [Failure Analysis], suggesting that their construction — not a hailstorm or other natural event — was to blame for their malfunction.
This rooftop-wide solar panel failure occurred just one month before Abound inked its deal with the Department of Energy.
The U.S. Department of Energy awarded Abound Solar a $400 million loan guarantee in December 2010, funds that the then-three-year-old startup said it would use to compete with solar panel industry leader First Solar.
The company had tapped into about $70 million of those funds by August 2011 when the DOE unplugged it from the taxpayers’ cash stream, around the same time the more famous Solyndra went bankrupt. That company ate through $535 million in loans guaranteed by the federal government before it failed.
While cheap imports from China have crippled much of the U.S. solar panel market, Abound’s problems appear to have been rooted in the quality of its own products, the competitiveness of its business model and its inability to retain top talent.
In May, the Colorado Watchdog blog published an internal Abound Solar email revealing that in November 2010, the company dispatched an engineering technician to remove an entire rooftop of defective solar panels from the investment headquarters of wealthy Democratic benefactor Pat Stryker. Bohemian Companies, Stryker’s investment firm, was among the early investors that brought Abound approximately $300 million in startup capital.
The email directed the technician to retrieve “two unused” panels for “FA” [Failure Analysis], suggesting that their construction — not a hailstorm or other natural event — was to blame for their malfunction.
This rooftop-wide solar panel failure occurred just one month before Abound inked its deal with the Department of Energy.
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