Solyndra failed because their cylindrical technology was superior to flat panel design. It captured more energy for a longer time during the day.
The tubes were more expensive to produce than flat panels, but they had advantages in efficiency, weight, and wind resistance.
The essential material in solar panels is so expensive that panel makers needed to squeeze every milliamp possible out of their panels.
Solyndra failed because of a huge price drop in the main component of solar panels, silicon.
Silicon is essentially sand. The Earth’s crust is 28% silicon. Sand is virtually free, and the supply, for all practical purposes, is inexhaustible. We will never run out. But silicon must be 99.99% pure to work in solar panels, and much purer to work in electronics, and it is expensive to purify silicon to that level.
Solar-grade silicon cost $24.00 a Kg in 2004, but worldwide demand for solar panels, computers, and smart phones drove the price to $450.00 per Kg by 2008. Predictions were that this would remain unchanged until at least 2012. Instead, the high price of pure silicon caused massive increases in production and the price has fallen dramatically.
The Chinese government helped the development of cheaper panels by pumping not $535 million, but billions of dollars into production companies, which are selling purified silicon and solar panels internationally.
China subsidized far more development then did the US, and we are paying the price. China produces 27 times more pure silicon than the US, and the gap is getting wider every day. China and Germany lead the world in solar panel production.
When the cost of pure silicon dropped to $50.00 a kilogram, an 89% drop in price, with an almost certainty of lower prices to come, the marginal efficiency of the costlier cylindrical cells became irrelevant overnight. Solyndra made the right choice by suspending all production.
You don’t keep making a better buggy whip when it is abundantly clear that everyone is switching to automobiles.
How does Congress respond? By attacking the Obama administration and demanding all green energy subsidies be stopped. By attacking subsidies funded during the Obama administration. There was no mention of subsidies on oil, natural gas, or coal, industries that are already so profitable (and ecologically damaging) that they need not, and should not be supported by taxpayers. The Chinese couldn’t have wished for a better response.
What is happening to solar energy development is the result of technological breakthrough and intelligent planning, not some law of economics that decrees government subsidy of business will always fail, as Republicans have insisted.
The energy producers measure the efficiency of energy in dollars per Kilowatt, and by that measure coal, oil, and natural gas win out over solar power, which is why fossil fuel industries use that yardstick. Quite soon, solar panels will reach that level of cost effectiveness, without releasing carbon into the environment. Fossil fuels, on the other hand must always release billions and billion of tons of carbon annually, and steady increases in pollution are unavoidable.
But they are leaving out human and environmental costs, which must be paid in human misery and taxpayer money later. In effect, the carbon polluters are getting a massive tax-funded subsidy. As a result, solar power in the United States is left in the dark.
I don’t think it is necessary for me to explain why many of our elected officials are trying to suppress solar power, and instead subsidize coal, oil, and natural gas. Most Americans realize that corporations are supplying the lion’s share of political campaign money. It’s not even a conspiracy; they’re doing it in broad daylight.
The true motive behind these attacks is to discredit the Obama administration by any means possible. Almost all negative articles about Solyndra come from biased sources such as the Washington Times, Bloomberg News, News Corp (The Wall Street Journal, and Fox News), The Washington Post, and other right wing outlets such as American for Prosperity, (Aka Americans for the Prosperity of the Koch Brothers)
Republican politicians are scrambling to put a negative spin on this bankruptcy to prove cronyism, embezzlement, lack of oversight, and presumably, that President Obama is clueless and incompetent.
The Solyndra loan guarantee was not in essence a stimulus project; it was an energy policy project. But since it was in the stimulus bill, the money was guaranteed during the Obama administration, and it might be fair to say with insufficient oversight.
May 2005: Just as a global silicon shortage begins driving up prices of solar photovoltaics [PV], Solyndra is founded to provide a cost-competitive alternative to silicon-based panels.
July 2005: The Bush Administration signs the Energy Policy Act of 2005 into law, creating the 1703 loan guarantee program.
February 2006 – October 2006: In February, Solyndra raises its first round of venture financing worth $10.6 million from CMEA Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and U.S. Venture Partners. In October, Argonaut Venture Capital, an investment arm of George Kaiser, invests $17 million into Solyndra. Madrone Capital Partners, an investment arm of the Walton family, invests $7 million. Those investments are part of a $78.2 million fund.
December 2006: Solyndra Applies for a Loan Guarantee under the 1703 program.
Late 2007: Loan guarantee program is funded. Solyndra was one of 16 clean-tech companies deemed ready to move forward in the due diligence process. The Bush Administration DOE moves forward to develop a conditional commitment.
October 2008: Then Solyndra CEO Chris Gronet touted reasons for building in Silicon Valley and noted that the “company’s second factory also will be built in Fremont, since a Department of Energy loan guarantee mandates a U.S. location.”
November 2008: Silicon prices remain very high on the spot market, making non-silicon based thin film technologies like Solyndra’s very attractive to investors. Solyndra also benefits from having very low installation costs. The company raises $144 million from ten different venture investors, including the Walton-family run Madrone Capital Partners. This brings total private investment to more than $450 million to date.
January 2009: In an effort to show it has done something to support renewable energy, the Bush Administration tries to take Solyndra before a DOE credit review committee before President Obama is inaugurated. The committee, consisting of career civil servants with financial expertise, remands the loan back to DOE “without prejudice” because it wasn’t ready for conditional commitment.
March 2009: The same credit committee approves the strengthened loan application. The deal passes on to DOE’s credit review board. Career staff (not political appointees) within the DOE issue a conditional commitment setting out terms for a guarantee.
June 2009: As more silicon production facilities come online while demand for PV wavers due to the economic slowdown, silicon prices start to drop. Meanwhile, the Chinese begin rapidly scaling domestic manufacturing and set a path toward dramatic, unforeseen cost reductions in PV. Between June of 2009 and August of 2011, PV prices drop more than 50%.
September 2009: Solyndra raises an additional $219 million. Shortly after, the DOE closes a $535 million loan guarantee after six months of due diligence. This is the first loan guarantee issued under the 1703 program. From application to closing, the process took three years – not the 41 days that is sometimes reported. OMB did raise some concerns in August not about the loan itself but how the loan should be “scored.” OMB testified Wednesday that they were comfortable with the final scoring.
January – June 2010: As the price of conventional silicon-based PV continues to fall due to low silicon prices and a glut of solar modules, investors and analysts start questioning Solyndra’s ability to compete in the marketplace. Despite pulling its IPO (as dozens of companies did in 2010), Solyndra raises an additional $175 million from investors.
November 2010: Solyndra closes an older manufacturing facility and concentrates operations at Fab 2, the plant funded by the $535 million loan guarantee. The Fab 2 plant is completed that same month — on time and on budget — employing around 3,000 construction workers during the build-out, just as the DOE projected.
February 2011: Due to a liquidity crisis, investors provide $75 million to help restructure the loan guarantee. The DOE rightly assumed it was better to give Solyndra a fighting chance rather than liquidate the company – which was a going concern – for market value, which would have guaranteed significant losses.
March 2011: Republican Representatives complain that DOE funds are not being spent quickly enough.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI): “despite the Administration’s urgency and haste to pass the bill [the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] … billions of dollars have yet to be spent.”
And House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-FL): “The whole point of the Democrat’s stimulus bill was to spend billions of dollars … most of the money still hasn’t been spent.”
June 2011: Average selling prices for solar modules drop to $1.50 a watt and continue on a pathway to $1 a watt. Solyndra says it has cut costs by 50%, but analysts worry how the company will compete with the dramatic changes in conventional PV.
August 2011: DOE refuses to restructure the loan a second time.
September 2011: Solyndra closes its manufacturing facility, lays off 1,100 workers and files for bankruptcy. The news is touted as a failure of the Obama Administration and the loan guarantee office. However, as of September 12, the DOE loan programs office closed or issued conditional commitments of $37.8 billion to projects around the country. The $535 million loan is only 1.3% of DOE’s loan portfolio. To date, Solyndra is the only loan that’s known to be troubled.
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/09/13/317594/timeline-bush-administration-solyndra-loan-guarantee/?mobile=nc
